Search Results
You can also browse by author, browse by source, or view the archives.
Au Revoir et ShalomSaturday, December 19, 2009 by Ami Cammarella | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
For an Israeli-born physician in Lille, life in France has become intolerable.The Genius of Yiddish
Saturday, December 19, 2009 by Benny Mer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Thoughts on a new Hebrew translation of Sholem Aleichem's masterpiece.A Trace of the Occult
Saturday, December 19, 2009 by Nathaniel Popper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
An exorcism ritual surfaces from the Cairo Genizah.Tearing the Fabric
Saturday, December 19, 2009 by Israel Harel | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The hundreds of secular educators urging young Israelis to refuse military service have forfeited all right to denounce religious soldiers objecting to evacuating settlements.Sunset in Helena
Saturday, December 19, 2009 by Ben Harris | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The last Jews in an Arkansas river town.
Perfidious Albion?Friday, December 18, 2009 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The British government's announcement on Tuesday that it would no longer tolerate the legal harassment of visiting foreign officials put a halt to speculations of an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister and now leader of the opposition in the Knesset. But it has not ended the uproar over Israel's alleged war crimes—Ms. Livni vocally supported her country's invasion of Gaza to stop rocket fire by Hamas—or over the principle of "universal jurisdiction" invoked by judges hoping to hold foreign (read, Israeli) dignitaries for prosecution. On one Arab website, an Israeli musician living in England lambastes the British...
School DazeThursday, December 17, 2009 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In a narrow decision by the UK Supreme Court, an Orthodox school in London has been ruled in violation of the country's race-relations law for refusing admission to the son of a non-Orthodox convert. "The judges knew they were handling a hot potato," comments the author of a 2008 report on the future of Jewish schools in the UK, who reads the decision as an open invitation to Parliament to revisit and re-write a defective law. But alarm bells have been ringing loudly in the Jewish community ever since the case started its way through the lower courts; the columnist...
Temple & SynagogueWednesday, December 16, 2009 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The structure defiled by the pagan Greeks in the rabbinic story of the miracle of Hanukkah was a replacement building for the First (Solomon’s) Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. The replacement was itself replaced by the magnificent Second Temple, completed by King Herod around 20 B.C.E. and in turn destroyed by the Romans 90 years later. By then, the centralized model of Temple worship with its sacrifices had already begun to be supplanted by prayer worship in small synagogues both inside and outside the Holy Land. Although the precise architecture of Solomon’s Temple can only be guessed at,...
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Haviv Rettig Gur | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A quarrel between the Jewish Agency and a private organization obscures a more salient fact about American Jewish immigration to Israel.My Vienna
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Phyllis Chesler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A violent attack on a Chabad rabbi last weekend spurs reflections on a city of Jewish dreams and nightmares.
