Faith & People
Catholics, Jews, and Jewish CatholicsMonday, June 18, 2012 by Daniel Johnson | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Jews and Catholics in the English-speaking world have so much in common that they ought to make common cause more often than they actually do. The friction between them that sometimes catches fire is, as often as not, based on mutual ignorance and mistrust.
The Aircraft PlotFriday, June 15, 2012 by Malka Margolin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Forty-two years ago today, on June 15, 1970, a group of Soviet dissidents gathered at Smolny Airport outside Leningrad. They had bought all the seats on a 12-passenger aircraft headed 240 miles northwest to Priozersk, near the Finnish border.
At the Edge of the AbyssTuesday, June 12, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The striking thesis of a new work is that even before Hitler came to power, the prognosis for European Jewry was bleak: "The demographic trajectory was grim and, with declining fertility, large-scale emigration, increasing outmarriage, and widespread apostasy, foreshadowed extinction."
Shavuot: The Stopping PointFriday, May 25, 2012 by Michael Carasik | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
There is always something going on in the Jewish festival calendar. From the fast of the 10th of Tevet through Hanukkah right around to the next fast of the 10th of Tevet on December 23rd, it's hard to go more than four or five weeks in a row without finding some special day to be observed.
Sleepless on ShavuotThursday, May 24, 2012 by Moshe Sokolow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Two practices long associated with Shavuot, the "time of the revelation of the Law" (z'man matan Torateinu), are the enrolling of children in religious school and the marathon all-night study vigil (tikkun leyl Shavuot).
Labor PainsWednesday, May 16, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
If Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labor Party, emerges victorious from the country's next general election, he will become the first Jewish Prime Minister to inhabit Number 10 Downing Street since Benjamin Disraeli renovated the innards of that venerable residence in 1877.
Either/OrthodoxyTuesday, May 15, 2012 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Belying the regimented connotation of the word "orthodox," Orthodox Judaism is by far the most diverse stream of Judaism, encompassing such incompatible types as rationalists and mystics, West Bank settlers and peaceniks, college professors and obscurantists, feminists and male chauvinists.
Our Zoroastrian MomentMonday, May 7, 2012 by Shai Secunda | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The great contemporary scholar of religion Jonathan Z. Smith once remarked that the omnipresent substructure of human thought lies in the human capacity to make comparisons. In ancient Sumer, scribes crafted intricate similes.
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.
Art against HistoryThursday, March 29, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Antiquity washes away the immediacy of historical pain and injustice. Our ability to feel suffering is indexed directly to its epoch: the more remote, the more detached we are. Museums play on this—pander to this—and to our forgetfulness. History is softened, elided, or erased.
Editors' Picks
The Benefactors of Breslau Malgorzata Stolarska-Fronia, H-Net. A new book cataloging Jewish welfare institutions in Breslau, Germany (now Poland) shows how philanthropy was central to the cultural exchange that followed the Emancipation.
India's Jewish General Aimee Ginsburg, Open. Asked to name a great Jewish warrior, few Jews would point to Jack Jacob. But in his native India, the Jewish general who won the Indo-Pakistan War is a hero.
Eighteenth-Century Aliyah Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. Two hundred years before modern Zionism, Jews across the Russian empire funded Rabbi Judah Chassid and his 120 followers on their trek from Europe to a new life in the Promised Land.
Defender of the Faiths Jonathan Sacks, London Times. While committed to defending the Anglican faith, Queen Elizabeth II has also played a significant role in the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society.
The Negev's “First People”? Havatzelet Yahel, Ruth Kark, Seth J. Frantzman, Middle East Quarterly. The Bedouin may be a poor and marginal sector of Israeli society, but this does not transform them into an indigenous nation.
Jews of Yemen, Get Out! Lyn Julius, Times of Israel. The few dozen Jews who remain in Yemen—many incentivized against aliyah by the Satmar movement—insist that Jewish life is good in Tzanaa despite a death toll attesting to the contrary.
Face to Faith Larry Yudelson, Jewish Standard. The story of how the Dalai Lama encountered the Jewish community in 1990 is well known. Less well-known is how Jews first encountered the Dalai Lama—in an 1804 compilation of travelers' accounts.
Amid the Alien Corn Jewish Ideas Daily. In one stunning declaration, the young Ruth shattered what had previously been an impermeable barrier of Israelite law, reshaping the law and Jewish history at once.
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?
No Quarter Matti Friedman, Times of Israel. For its two million tourists, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City is the historical and spiritual center of Judaism. But the only Jews who lived there before 1948 were those too poor to leave.