Europe
To Be Young, Gifted, and a British JewMonday, November 7, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
One way to think of British Jewry is to focus on its slow and steady decline: 270,000 souls, demographically graying; synagogue affiliation on a downward spiral; out-marriage running at between 30-50 percent.
British Philo-Semitism, Once and FutureThursday, November 3, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with public discourse about Jews in today's United Kingdom can be forgiven for viewing the term "British philo-Semitism" as an oxymoron.
Creating the Master RaceFriday, October 28, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan's peaceful Battery Park is an unlikely place to explore some of the 20th century's most horrific evils. Deadly Medicine, an exhibit on Nazi racial science, is a sobering examination of the intertwined history of science and evil.
The Yiddish Silver ScreenThursday, October 27, 2011 by Nahma Sandrow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Nobody is sure exactly how many movies were ever made in Yiddish. James Hoberman's exhaustive study Bridge of Light (2010) lists some hundred such films, made in the 20th century primarily in America, Germany, Austria, Romania, Poland, and Russia.
Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Hating JewTuesday, October 25, 2011 by Dan Kagan-Kans | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The French author Irène Némirovsky lived through one world war and died at Hitler's hands in the second. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Kiev at the turn of the last century, she came of age just in time to flee revolutionary Russia for Paris.
The Genesis of Modern ScienceTuesday, October 18, 2011 by David Curzon | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton, and the other founders of modern science were all believers in the truths of the opening chapter in the Hebrew Bible.
The Wages of DurbanWednesday, September 21, 2011 by Arch Puddington | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In the days just prior to the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) was very much in the news, and for reasons that are altogether relevant to the mass murder that took place on September 11, 2001.
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.
Settling for StatehoodMonday, September 19, 2011 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly has just begun. Unless a diplomatic miracle happens, that body will soon be asked to approve what amounts to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Palestinian spokesmen say they had no choice but to make their end run around serious negotiations with Israel.
Jews against ZionismTuesday, August 30, 2011 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
It will come as a surprise to many that the current adamant Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state was once American policy. An even greater surprise is that an American rabbi and the Jewish organization he headed played a major role in the government's articulation of that policy.
Editors' Picks
How Bad Faith Drives Out Good Melanie Phillips, Standpoint. Religion, or more precisely the religion of the Bible, and more precisely still the Judaism at its core, is the crucible of reason. Those who reject the religion of the Bible are rejecting reason itself.
Odyssey in Odessa Paul Berger, Forward. A century ago, Odessa's rambunctious ghetto rivaled New York's Lower East Side as a melting pot. Now? "If you want the real Moldavanka you must go to Brooklyn."
Making "Unofficial" Jews Official Dianna Cahn, Times of Israel. Bulgaria's fast-track conversions for Jews whose identity has been erased under Communism might not meet the standards of the Israeli chief rabbinate—but the alternative is to lose them altogether.
My Heart is in the East (of Europe) Timothy Snyder, Wall Street Journal. Not many Ashkenazi Jews are nostalgic for life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—though for centuries, Poland claimed the most vibrant Jewish community in the world.
Columbus the Converso Charles Garcia, CNN. Columbus's voyage was not funded by Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish conversos and another prominent Jew. Was he meant to find gold to finance the Jewish conquest of Jerusalem?
With Friends Like These Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post. While the prevalence of overt anti-Zionism across Europe is notorious, it is less well known that even Europeans who claim to be pro-Israel are invariably hostile to the Jewish state.
A Heretic in the Truth Zachary Micah Gartenberg, Jewish Review of Books. Spinoza takes Maimonides' characterization of miracles as divinely implanted—but still natural—anomalies in the regular course of things. Then Spinoza adds a twist.
Doctor Who? Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times. Despite a sequence of papal edicts prohibiting Jewish doctors from treating Christians, almost every pope in history had a personal physician who was Jewish.
Dragoman Eric Ormsby, Wall Street Journal. Though Bernard Lewis is firmly opposed to historical relativists, he is keenly aware of the sheer slipperiness of historical terrain.
The Revolutionary Imperative and the Non-Jewish Jew Colin Shindler, Jewish Chronicle. The Balfour Declaration and the October Revolution happened within days of each other. Which path were Jews with a social conscience to follow?