assimilation
Faith and MatrimonyFriday, April 19, 2013 by Dana Evan Kaplan | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
An initiative to admit intermarried students to Reform rabbinical schools is yet another indication that Reform Judaism is swiftly becoming not so much a religious movement as a Jewish activities club.
Eizenstat on the Jewish FutureFriday, March 15, 2013 by Jerome A. Chanes | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In his new book on the Jewish future, Jewish diplomat Stuart Eizenstat sees Jewish destiny evolving in the friendly competition between the sovereignty of Israel and the pluralism of America.
Opening the Gates of JudaismWednesday, February 20, 2013 by Motti Inbari | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Given the demographic and spiritual decline among “biological” Jews in America, if we want to keep Judaism alive, we must do something that we haven't done for 2000 years: proselytize.
Leaving the GhettoFriday, February 8, 2013 by Jacob Katz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Was there any possibility," asks Jacob Katz in this 1996 Commentary essay, "that the Jews collectively might have been accepted in Europe on their own terms—that is, as a community, with a religion opposed to Christianity?"
Life Goes OnMonday, February 4, 2013 by Jonathan Gondelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Life Goes On, by German-Jewish novelist Hans Keilson, had been forgotten since the Nazis banned it in 1934. Now, a year after Keilson's death, it has been translated into English.
The Turning of the Torah TideTuesday, December 4, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
“Torah Judaism today retains more of its youth than at any time since the Haskalah.” Historian Marc Shapiro recently made this remark. Can he possibly be correct?
The Real Jewish GeographyFriday, November 16, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
A new series of high resolution maps, produced by geographer Joshua Comenetz, provide a view of American Jewish life that is seemingly familiar—but, beneath the surface, spread unevenly across the 50 states.
At Last, ZionFriday, September 21, 2012 by Charles Krauthammer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Milan Kundera once defined a small nation as "one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear, and it knows it." Israel is a small country. This is not to say that extinction is its fate. Only that it can be.
Editors' Picks
Did Sondheim Destroy the Musical? Kate Wakeling, Jewish Quarterly. Broadway musicals were once the bastion of Jewish acculturation in America. But, in his musicals, Jewish composer Stephen Sondheim swapped assimilation for alienation.
Who Is A Jew? Gil Student, Torah Musings. In 1958, David Ben-Gurion consulted with Jewish scholars and leaders around the world in hopes of finding a universal definition. He received 45 different answers, of course.
Britain’s New Jews David Dee, Jewish Chronicle. By promoting participation in sports, the Anglo-Jewish establishment transformed Eastern European immigrants from aliens to “Englishmen and women of the Mosaic persuasion”—at the expense of their Judaism.
Community, Covenant, and Commitment George E. Johnson, Jewish Ideas and Ideals. While Joseph B. Soloveitchik ruled out religious collaboration with non-Orthodox Jews, he advocated political unity. But since his death, American Jewry has fractured.
Court Jews Dov S. Zakheim, Jewish Ideas and Ideals. "To what extent does halakhah permit a Jewish official to sidestep normative rabbinic law and tradition?"
Out of the Closet Josh Glancy, Jewish Chronicle. “Some Jews are beginning to grasp a fact that Britain's Asian and black communities have known for years: we're a minority, maybe that can actually be quite cool.”
What Crisis of Zionism? J. J. Goldberg, Forward. For American Jews under 35, the decline in attachment to Israel seems to be reversing itself—but not the decline in trust toward Israel’s government.
The Endangered “New York Jew” Jack Wertheimer, Commentary. If one insists on indulging in the dubious exercise of identifying types of Jews who are “undeserving,” it behooves us to ask who, in fact, is most worthy of communal support: those who are failing to raise and nurture a successor generation of Jews or those who are producing and educating enough Jewish children to make up for the indifference of the rest?