Adult Learning
Reading between the ListsWednesday, April 4, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
As long as humans have been writing, humans have been making lists and ranking things. The new Daily Beast/Newsweek list of "America's Top 50 Rabbis for 2012" is, like most American lists, whether of rabbis, cars, or colleges, designed to shape reality as much as reflect it.
Scholarship and Anti-Semitism at YaleMonday, March 26, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Almost a year has passed since Yale University shuttered the five-year-old Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism, known by the unwieldy acronym "YIISA," and replaced it with the Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism, or "YPSA."
Material WorldTuesday, February 21, 2012 by Michael Carasik | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When is a text not a text? When it is an object. When a Torah scroll is held up in the air so that congregants can view its columns of words, it is not being read. The words that the congregation chants are indeed found in the scroll, but in two different places.
Whose Holocaust?Friday, January 27, 2012 by Margot Lurie | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
For much of Europe, today is the UN-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has dedicated his address this year to children murdered by the Nazis, with the message that "the best tribute to the memory of these children is an ongoing effort to teach the universal lessons of the Holocaust, so that no such horror is visited upon future generations."
Eating Your ValuesFriday, November 4, 2011 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The many Jewish laws regarding food—how it gets from the ground and into our mouths in a kosher manner—are central to Jewish life. But what ethical framework underlies the system of kashrut? Maimonides' justifications for kashrut range from avoiding cruelty to animals and eschewing the idolatrous practices of antiquity to considerations of health.
Career CorpsTuesday, October 4, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The United States has its military academies at West Point and Annapolis. The British put their officers through Sandhurst. But how will the Israeli Defense Forces, a citizen army, train its officers for the 21st century?
Israel Studies 101Monday, October 3, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The modern American research university is a house of many rooms. The field of Israel Studies, which has emerged in the past decade, occupies one of the newest—and smallest—of those rooms.
Rosh Hashanah with the Chief RabbiTuesday, September 20, 2011 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Ten years ago, the first day of Rosh Hashanah—the two-day Jewish New Year—fell on September 18. That was one week after September 11, 2001, when almost 3,000 people were killed by Muslim terrorists. On that Rosh Hashanah, rabbis did not lack for sermon topics.
Too Many Museums?Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Although the paint is still wet on Philadelphia's National Museum of American Jewish History, an announcement has just been made of a planned National Museum of the Jewish People in Washington, D.C., steps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and not far from two other Jewish museums.
The Bible and the Good LifeThursday, July 14, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
What manner of work is the Hebrew Bible? The 17th-century freethinker Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza had an answer. As part of his war to emancipate philosophy from the influence of religion, he reduced the biblical message to, in effect, one word: obedience.
Editors' Picks
Studying Bible with Bibi Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post. This past Wednesday, while the world powers engaged in talks with the Iranians, and Israel was rocked by protests about immigration, Prime Minister Netanyahu sat down to contemplate the book of Ruth.
Sorrow in the Talmud Marc Bregman, H-Net. Counterintuitively, traditional Jewish teaching inculcated right behavior by relating how even the greatest leaders sometimes failed to behave according to their own principles.
The Practice of Musar Geoffrey Claussen, Conservative Judaism. The Conservative movement likes to see itself as intellectual one. But it might have something to learn from a 19th-century movement of strenuous moral development.
P.O.R.K. Leah Stern, Times of Israel. "Our children have suddenly become ultra-Orthodox. What do we do?" P.O.R.K. to the rescue!
History without Witnesses Deborah E. Lipstadt, Jewish Week. As the Holocaust disappears from living memory, what matters is not who is speaking but who is listening.
Bullies, Sluts, Bulimics . . . and Supreme Court Justices Shira Kohn, Lilith. Given the numbers of women involved over the decades, historians won't be able to ignore the Jewish sorority experience for much longer. (PDF)
The Mis-Education of a Young Evangelical Dexter Van Zile, New English Review. How traumatic has the Jewish refusal to accept Jesus as the messiah been for Christians, and to what end?
The Chinese Kabbalist Jonathan Wilson, Forward. In an interview, the scholar Ying Han reveals her first impressions of Jews, the similarities between Hillel's teachings and Confucianism, and how a translating assignment led her to pursue a PhD in Jewish literature and Kabbalah.
Paradise Regained William Kolbrener, Aish.com. A literary encounter with Paradise Lost helped one graduate student access the poetry inherent in the Jewish idea of repentance.
By Faith Alone Israel Drazin, Jewish Ideas and Ideals. The late Rabbi Yehuda Amital was an influential Israeli educator, instrumental in integrating yeshiva study with military service, and an opponent of rabbis' setting public policy.