Communism
Christopher Hitchens’s Jewish ProblemTuesday, May 28, 2013 by Benjamin Kerstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In another highlight from our archives, Benjamin Kerstein inquires into a revered writer's virulent hostility toward Judaism (December 13, 2010).
Antisemitism: Obsession or Logic?Thursday, January 24, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Robert Wistrich’s new book, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel, does much to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was and is a fixture of the Left—but stops short of that conclusion.
When Prayers for Rain are AnsweredFriday, January 11, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Israel is, in most minds, an arid land bereft of water, not cursed with its superabundance. But a look at geography and history suggests otherwise.
America and the Muslim Brotherhood: A RomanceThursday, December 20, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
One of the most consistent and depressing aspects of U.S.-Middle Eastern relations is the determination of our intellectuals and officials to defend Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
The Twenty-Seventh ManWednesday, November 28, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On the night of August 12, 1952, a group of Yiddish writers was executed on Joseph Stalin’s orders for the crime of writing while Jewish. The executions were the tragic culmination of the grand romance between Jewish intellectuals and Marxism.
Can Jews Write History?Thursday, November 8, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In his well-known book Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, historian Eric Hobsbawm made the remarkable assertion that “no serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist.”
Ettinger’s RedemptionTuesday, October 16, 2012 by Allan Arkush | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
I am not sure I would have read Shmuel Ettinger if the award-winning Israeli film Footnote, which centers on the relationship between a father and son who are both members of the Talmud department of the Hebrew University, hadn’t whetted my appetite for gossip about that august institution.
Trotsky Eats and RunsWednesday, January 25, 2012 by Micah D. Halpern | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
I first heard the name Trotsky when I was seven years old. My grandfather, a Jewish tailor from Belarus who arrived in the goldene medine and pulled himself up by his bootstraps to own a men's suit factory in New York, had just gotten a swept-back haircut. He called it a Trotsky.
Editors' Picks
Before Marx Became Marxist John Gray, New York Review of Books. "The man who would write the Communist Manifesto just five years later was advocating the use of the army to suppress a communist workers' uprising!"
The Red and the White Benn Steil, Foreign Affairs. Jewish economist Harry Dexter White, architect of the post-war Western monetary system agreed at Bretton Woods, was suspected of being a Soviet spy. New research shows he was.
Mao's Jewish Lieutenant Jonathan Margolis, Financial Times. Revered in China as a communist founder, Sidney Rittenberg rose to be a Red Guard leader in the Cultural Revolution, in which millions died. Now he is a successful businessman in Arizona.
Balfour and the Bolsheviks Eddy Portnoy, Sh’ma. History remembers 1917 for the Balfour Declaration’s support of Zionism. But Jews in 1917 were more interested in another event of that same week: the October Revolution.
Communist Colluders Anne Applebaum, Jewish Chronicle. After World War II, East European Communist parties sought to burnish their image as nationalist patriots. How did they do it? Anti-Semitism, of course.
Stalin’s Jewish Spies Baruch Sterman, Rarest Blue. While Stalin was persecuting their coreligionists at home, a disproportionate number of Jews dutifully served him by spying on America’s nuclear research.
Strange Story Elizabeth Blair, NPR. In 1940, Abel Meeropol was called to testify before a committee investigating Communism in public schools. They wanted to know whether the American Communist Party had paid him to write "Strange Fruit."
From Dogma to Dissent Benjamin Ivry, Forward. Vasily Grossman is now lauded as a dissident writer who dared to speak out against the USSR and reveal Stalin’s oppression of Jews. But he started out as a willing Soviet apologist.