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Faith & People


Israel: The Miracle Israel: The Miracle
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 by Paul Johnson | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The state of Israel is the product of more than 4,000 years of Jewish history. "If you want to understand our country, read this!" said David Ben-Gurion on the first occasion I met him, in 1957. And he slapped the Bible. But the creation and survival of Israel are also very much a 20th-century phenomenon.
Crimes of Communion Crimes of Communion
Monday, May 9, 2011 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Two years ago, a Muslim reporter for the Malaysian magazine Al Islam attended a Catholic mass in Kuala Lumpur with a companion, surreptitiously took communion, and put the wafer in his mouth, only to spit it out later. The May 2009 issue of Al Islam featured a cover photograph of the soggy, partially-eaten wafer—to the horror of local church authorities.
Calibrating Darkness Calibrating Darkness
Monday, May 2, 2011 by Henry Tylbor | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A child survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and then of Auschwitz and Majdanek, Henry Tylbor (1929–2009) eventually settled in New York where he wrote and taught. A polymath, and fluent in several languages, he was especially interested in the fields of linguistics, neuropsychology, the sociology of culture, and their intersections. The present work of autobiographical fiction is among the manuscripts left at his death. In observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, it appears here for the first time.—The Editors
Loving the Jews Loving the Jews
Thursday, April 28, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Five years before Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State in 1896, an American Methodist lay leader named William Blackstone dreamed of the Jewish people's returning to their ancestral homeland and rebuilding their ancient country. Blackstone translated his dream into a petition signed by 400 prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and a future president, William McKinley.
Freedom Tales Freedom Tales
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

An enslaved people, brutalized, voiceless except for groans and cries, comes into possession of a voice of their own: no wonder the tale itself sometimes seems to embody the whole meaning of the Exodus.
A Chosen People? A Chosen People?
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Within months of Israel's lightning victory in the June 1967 war, French President Charles de Gaulle was asked for his judgment of the dramatically new situation created by the triumph of the Jewish state over its enemies. Still smarting from Israel's refusal to heed his advice and wait passively for the Arab armies to attack, de Gaulle labeled the Jews "an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering."
Telling Jewish Time Telling Jewish Time
Monday, April 11, 2011 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The most acclaimed Jewish Bible commentary opens with a question. Why, asks Rashi (1040–1105), does the Torah begin with the account of creation, when it should properly have begun with God's revelation of His very first law to Moses on the eve of the Exodus from Egypt: "This month shall be for you the first of months"?
Clash of Civilizations Clash of Civilizations
Friday, April 8, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The death toll in Afghanistan has passed the two-dozen mark in the riots "inspired" by Pastor Terry Jones's burning of a Quran in Florida. The grisly political theater has served its purpose.
“We Love Death” “We Love Death”
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In 2007, two years before he killed thirteen people and wounded twenty-nine at Fort Hood, Texas, Nidal Malik Hasan prepared a slide show for his fellow Army doctors on the subject of Islam. One of his last points read: "We love death more than you love life!"
Seeking Solomon Seeking Solomon
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by Eve Levavi Feinstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

For traditionalists, the biography of King Solomon is enshrined in the Bible, in the narrative accounts in the books of Kings and Chronicles. The son of King David, who spent his career battling Israel's enemies, Solomon is depicted as ushering in an era of peace and prosperity. Yet the Bible also relates that Solomon took numerous foreign wives and concubines—one thousand in total—who led him to worship foreign gods and build shrines for their service.
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Editors' Picks
The Afghanistan Genizah Gil Shefler, Jerusalem Post. The scholarly world is abuzz over a cave filled with ancient scrolls that may be the most significant historical discovery in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Genizah.  (Hebrew report with video here.)      
Found on Hanukkah Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz. Excavations near the Western Wall unearthed a rare clay seal that appears to have been used to authenticate the purity of ritual objects used in the Second Temple.
Are You a Hellenist? Gil Student, Torah Musings. Is a contemporary acculturated American ignoring the main theme of Hanukkah? And for that matter, how did Maimonides reconcile his devotion to Greek philosophy with the ostensible message to reject Greek ideas?
Yehuda Halevi's Death and the Cairo Genizah Eliezer Brodt, Seforim. Legend says the great 12th-century Spanish hymnist reached Eretz Yisrael but was killed at Jerusalem's city gate. Genizah documents suggest that the legend was based on fact.
Religion as a Chain of Memory Alan Brill, Book of Doctrines and Opinions. The medieval Ashkenazic memory of many 20th-century Jews thinkers is fading. What will take its place?
The Meaning of Hanukkah Jon D. Levenson, Wall Street Journal. In some ways, Christians preserved the story of Hanukkah better than the Jews did.
What's Under the Bridge Shmuel Rosner, New York Times. The bureaucratic brouhaha over the unsound Mughrabi bridge was really about the attempt by some Muslim leaders to deny Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.
Rabbi-Chaplains of the Civil War Karen Abbott, New York Times. Could a member of the Union Army "despise and reject the Savior of men . . . and yet be a fit minister of religion"?
Off the Record Jonathan S. Tobin, Contentions. The Palestinian Authority's UNESCO triumph will not only facilitate its efforts to bypass the peace process, but also its campaign to expunge the Jewish heritage of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Et tu, Harold Bloom? Mark Paredes, Jewish Journal. Just as it would not be appropriate to criticize rabbinic Judaism for not being an exact replica of Mosaic Judaism, it is also improper to ridicule the LDS Church for having adopted certain practices of late.