Europe
You Only Live TwiceTuesday, August 6, 2013 by Michel Gurfinkiel | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
European Judaism looks healthy, and secure. And yet, the majority of European Jews, seconded by many Jewish and non-Jewish experts, insist that catastrophe may lie ahead. Read in full on Mosaic.
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?"
Jews and Human Rights In Europe: the Unfulfilled PromiseFriday, December 28, 2012 by Michael Pinto-Duschinsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
While many German war criminals escaped prosecution, the European Court of Human Rights may soon outlaw brit milah across Europe. [Part II of II]
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.
Lambs to the SlaughterWednesday, August 22, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Last week, the normally cautious Jewish community of Amsterdam took the unusual step of describing a member of the Dutch parliament as a "serious danger to Jews in the Netherlands and consequently Europe as a whole."
Until a Hundred TwentyTuesday, August 21, 2012 by Hillel Fradkin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Bernard Lewis has published many books on the history of the Middle East and Islam. On these subjects he is, simply, the pre-eminent authority. At 96, he has now published yet another book: a memoir.
Through Night and FogMonday, August 20, 2012 by Eitan Kensky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
My father and I visited Auschwitz for the first time this summer. It was toward the end of a long trip to Eastern Europe. We had already gone to the killing fields and forests of Lithuania, and to Warsaw, where my father broke down . . .
Danube BluesThursday, July 12, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Be sure not to wear a kippah on the street," a veteran Hungarian-Israeli businessman cautioned as we disembarked at Budapest's Ferihegy Airport. With public opinion surveys showing it to be among the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe, I took warnings to be Jewishly discreet to heart throughout our visit to the Hungarian capital.
Freud in ZionTuesday, July 3, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Three Jewishly-conflicted German speakers changed the course of modern history. By the time the first, Karl Marx, had died in 1883, Sigmund Freud and Theodor Herzl were rising stars in their twenties; later, they came to be neighbors living but a few doors apart on a Vienna street.
Parsis and Jews, Exile and ReturnMonday, June 25, 2012 by Shai Secunda | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
At the turn of the 16th century, the Portuguese discovered an eastern passage to India that afforded them easy access to well-priced goods and to India’s natural wonders and human curiosities—and they encountered a community, exiled hundreds of years earlier, that many mistook for Jews.
Editors' Picks
Is Israel Isolated? Efraim Inbar, Middle East Quarterly. "A closer look at Israel's relations with countries near and far, as well as with international institutions, belies the claim that it is isolated. In fact, Israel is increasingly acknowledged as a world player."
Smiling on Yom Hashoah Chaim Steinmetz, Times of Israel. On Holocaust survivors at a Montreal memorial service: “Here they are, 68 years later, with their grandchildren. They have rebuilt their families and made profound contributions to our community.”
Learning Jazz James Hughes, Atlantic. There was a jazz scene in Europe even under Nazi occupation. Certain Nazis’ love of jazz even managed to save the lives of a few Jewish musicians.
“Ihr zint frei!” Margalit Fox, New York Times. In 1945 Rabbi Herschel Schacter, who has died at age 95, entered Buchenwald with Patton’s Third Army. “Shalom Aleichem, Jews,” he shouted to the inmates in Yiddish, “you are free!”
The Anti-Semitism of Progressive Scandinavians Liam Hoare, The Tower. Scandinavia was never a hotbed of traditional anti-Semitism. But now its political discourse displays a "failure to distinguish between Israel, Zionism, and local Jewish communities."
Divided by Faith David J. Davis, Imaginative Conservative. “Where modern tolerance does not permit any rival to the authority of rationalism and secular humanism, pre-Enlightenment Europe was establishing policies that permitted worldviews which its rulers saw as heretical.”
Vienna's Jewish University Cnaan Lipshiz, JTA. To its founder, the Lauder Business School is a first-rate business university for European Jews. To Austria, it is a chance to "re-establish Vienna as the seat of Jewish intelligentsia."
Israel's Europe Lobby Naftali Balanson, Jerusalem Post. A new Israeli law has forced NGOs to reveal that they receive much of their funding from the same European governments that uncritically support their allegations against Israel.
Europe's First Jewish President? Dinah Spritzer, JTA. The Czech Republic is Israel's staunchest ally in Europe—and, if Jan Fischer wins in the coming elections, will be the first European country to have a Jewish president.
There’s Occupied and There’s Occupied Dore Gold, Israel Hayom. Northern Cyprus, conquered by Turkey and ethnically cleansed of Greek Cypriots, is clearly “occupied territory.” But Europeans, far from boycotting it, are buying homes there in droves.