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TefillinMonday, January 25, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"This refers to the tefillin worn on the head," commented a first-century sage on a verse in Deuteronomy (28:10): "And all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by God's name, and they will fear you." Fear is right. Last Thursday, the sight of a mild-mannered student wearing tefillin for his morning prayers terrified a U.S. Airways crew into an emergency landing. Tefillin, or, in ungainly English, phylacteries, strike a primal chord in those who wear them as in those who see them, and with reason. Tefillin physically enact the biblical injunction to make the words of...
Monday, January 25, 2010 by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
As Israel works to overcome the strategic challenge posed by rocket fire, Hizballah and Hamas celebrate "victory."Who is Ayad Jamal Al-Din?
Monday, January 25, 2010 by Nimrod Raphaeli | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Profiling a highly unorthodox Shiite cleric, a harsh Iraqi critic of Iran, and one of the most interviewed figures in the Arab world.I Miss You, Jew
Monday, January 25, 2010 by Dominika Maslikowski | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
In Poland, discomfiting memories give rise to awkward and ambivalent gestures.Death of a Party
Monday, January 25, 2010 by Gershom Gorenberg | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The fading away of the last founders exposes the inability of Israel's Labor party to change with the times.The Teaching of David Halivni
Monday, January 25, 2010 by Florian Deloup Wolfowicz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
An in-depth look at the mind and work of a commanding talmudic scholar.Have a Safe Trip, Mohammed
Friday, January 22, 2010 by Mohammed Darawshe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Supporting a Muslim member of the Knesset for joining the Israeli parliamentary delegation to Auschwitz.On the West Bank Resurgence, and Beyond
Friday, January 22, 2010 by Jeffrey Goldberg | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
An interview with Elliott Abrams.
Let Us PrayFriday, January 22, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Rabbi Shimon said: make not your prayers a fixity, but a plea." The inevitable tension in prayer between practice and passion, between communal structure and the lone voice, was certainly known to the biblical prophets and the rabbis of the Talmud. Yet today, the traditional prayers—profoundly communal and reflecting ancient ideas of monarchy, patriarchy, and retribution, sometimes in complicated Hebrew—seem alien to many. If the test of contemporary Judaism is whether it offers a compelling personal experience to "the Jew within," a common liturgy becomes more difficult to maintain than ever before. And so, the project of renewing the Siddur—the Hebrew...
Friday, January 22, 2010 by Tsafi Saar | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A tragic Zionist heroine has begun to emerge in her human complexity.
