Current Affairs
Abuse Among the Orthodox: Bad News, Good NewsMonday, May 21, 2012 by Yoel Finkelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
First, the bad news: Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse occurs in Orthodox Jewish communities. Next, the worse news: Two recent New York Times stories are just the latest piece of evidence that Orthodox communities are often in denial and worse.
The Moral Costs of Jewish Day SchoolMonday, May 14, 2012 by Aryeh Klapper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
There is a lot of hand-wringing these days about whether the rising costs of Jewish day schools are sustainable. The discussion has been about money: How can we get more? How can we spend less? These questions miss the point.
The Case of American Religious ZionismThursday, May 10, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Few things divide and provoke American Jews like the question of Zionism. Though many wish to remember otherwise, this was also the case before the founding of Israel in 1948.
The Move that Dare Not Speak Its NameMonday, April 30, 2012 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Recent years have seen a flurry of reports, studies, and worried discussions about strengthening Diaspora Jewry's ties to Israel. But what about strengthening the ties to Israel—or, for that matter, to the Diaspora—of the growing numbers of Israelis who live abroad?
Going the DistanceFriday, April 27, 2012 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Israel is a nation-state. In contrast, Diaspora Jewry—in particular, American Jewry—is a network of voluntary communities, constituting not just different structures but different life-worlds. While it is usually taken for granted that nation-states and their respective diasporas will grow apart, with Jews the issue is hotly debated.
Not Everything is IlluminatedTuesday, April 10, 2012 by Ben Greenfield | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Judaism is famously infatuated with text; and the New American Haggadah, with contemporary authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander listed as editor and translator, respectively, is the latest in a long line of love letters by Jews to their object of adoration.
Like a PlayerThursday, April 5, 2012 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Sports fans and religious adherents often speak the same language—of allegiance and passion, drama and catharsis, belief and faith, idols and icons, shrines and cathedrals, curses and blasphemy. When these two empires intersect, it is no surprise that there is often a struggle for primacy.
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.
Peter Beinart, I Quit.Monday, April 2, 2012 by Yoel Finkelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Peter Beinart's new blog on the Daily Beast titled Open Zion (formerly Zion Square) is dedicated to an "open and unafraid conversation about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish future." But after several weeks of Open Zion, one writer has concluded that its conversation is not, in fact, open—and is not one in which he can continue to take part. Here, he resigns his position.
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."
Editors' Picks
Turning Sun Into Rain Anav Silverman, Tazpit. Making fresh water through desalination is too expensive for many poor countries. But new Israeli technology can make the process cheaper—and better.
Ignore Anti-Semitism: Bernstein’s Rules David Bernstein, Forward. Has a fringe group announced an anti-Israel demonstration on campus? Odds are that it’s Israeli and Jewish sources who will give them the publicity they want.
Don’t Know Much ’bout Orthodoxy Yair Rosenberg, Tablet. New York media think an Orthodox woman running for political office is an anomaly among females who are cloistered, uneducated, and subservient. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Kadima’s Prospects, and Bibi’s Yehudah Mirsky, Daily Beast. Now that the unity government deal between Likud and Kadima has ended, where will the broad middle of the Israeli body politic go?
Attacking Israel Online Ben Cohen, Commentary. Ironically, charting both the writings and the career trajectories of devoted anti-Zionists makes a uniquely strong case for the continued existence and protection of the Jewish state.
Nora Knows What to Do Ariel Levy, New Yorker. “Those endless women-in-film panels. It’s, like, just do it! Just do it . . . It’s my ongoing argument with a whole part of the women’s movement.” A profile of Nora Ephron, who died yesterday at age seventy-one. (2009)
We Failed Zuckerberg Dana Evan Kaplan, Forward. A Reform rabbi argues that his movement's pluralistic theology is to blame for the detachment of young Jews from their faith.
Between Tradition and Modernity Ari L. Goldman, Jewish Week. The same week in which the Conservative movement issued guidelines for performing same-sex marriages, it ruled against the use of computers, cell phones, and e-readers on Shabbat.
Jewish is the New Black Peter Wood, Chronicle of Higher Education. Identity group labels seldom work as their proponents hope—and at CUNY, some faculty members see a new taxonomy as rife with the potential to become a tool of exclusion.
The Third American Jewish Revolution Steven F. Windmueller, eJewish Philanthropy. In the current economic climate, the American Jewish system—a $9.7 billion annual enterprise—will need to rethink basic elements, like work, membership, and community.