History
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."
The Six-Day War: Day SixAfter five days spent battling Arab forces, Israel now faced a new opponent: time. With the Egyptians and Jordanians out of the war, and the Syrians having agreed to a ceasefire, the Security Council was becoming restless.
The Six-Day War: Day FiveOnce Dayan decided against a limited attack in the Golan and opted instead to take the entire Heights, Israel's air force pounded the Syrians. The Syrians had supposed the Israelis to be tired and intimidated by their incessant shelling . . .
Day Four: “Attack! Attack!”Friday, June 8, 2012 by Allan Arkush | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On June 1, 1967, when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol yielded to public pressure and turned over the portfolio of defense minister to former IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan, the mood in Israel changed overnight.
The Six-Day War: Day TwoOn June 6th, 1967, by 8:00 a.m. Tel Aviv time, Israeli forces had entered el-Arish. It initially seemed desolate, but the Israelis were soon under fire from every window. Israel's leadership, not expecting the war to move so quickly, had not considered what do to beyond el-Arish.
The Lower Lower East SideFriday, June 1, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
What most American Jews know about New York's Lower East Side comes from books like Irving Howe's World of our Fathers. But I was born and raised in the neighborhood at a time when there were still pushcarts along Avenue C . . .
The Mona Lisa of ViennaWednesday, May 30, 2012 by Susan Hertog | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In 1857, when Emperor Franz-Joseph pulled down the ancient stone wall encompassing Vienna, the social and cultural traditions of the country seemed to tumble with it. Impoverished immigrants, many of them Jews, flooded in from the east.
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.
Editors' Picks
Britain’s Maginot Line Kevin Connolly, BBC. Israel’s landscape is dotted with squat, brick-colored “Tegart forts,” built to withstand all attack and ensure long-term British military control of Palestine. Today, they are just artifacts.
Burnt House Leen Ritmeyer, Gospel Coalition. An excavated palace not far from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount might have been the palace of the High Priest Annas—and thus the site of Jesus’ Jewish trial. (Interview by Justin Taylor)
Education, Not Persecution Jonathan B. Krasner, Forward. Literacy explains the Jews’ scattered settlement in scores of small communities throughout Christian Europe, where the demand for skilled occupations was limited.
In Search of a Cultural Arab Spring Salman Masalha, MEMRI. In the images of Syrian violence an Israeli Druse sees the brutality of modern Arab regimes: “Every one of them is based on tribal and religious tyranny.”
Poland’s Casualties of War Suzanne Rozdeba, Tablet. In Nazi-occupied Poland, Wladyslaw Gugla risked death as a Jew and a teacher of Slavic children. Protected by villagers, he survived—only to die from habits formed in hiding.
On the Virtue of Belief without Practice Alan Brill, Book of Doctrines and Opinions. Herbert Loewe argued that it was better for lax Jews to believe one thing and do another than remake Jewish doctrine in their own image.
Open Doors Nena C. Benigno, Philippine Daily Inquirer. In 1940, the last Jews to escape from Nazi Germany found no country willing to take them in until President Quezon of the Philippines invited them to live and work in Manila.
Golda, Golda, Get Lost Tamara Zieve, Jerusalem Post. In 1971, young Israelis of Mizrahi descent styled themselves as Israeli Black Panthers and declared war “against the Ashkenazi government.”
The Forgotten Firebrand Sue Vice, H-Net. Appalled at the secularism of inter-war Anglo-Jewry, poet Izak Goller bemoaned “the gods of the shops and the warehouses / Hollow papier-mâché imitations of the Golden Calf of our ancestors!”
Israel: The Home Video Michal Shmulovich, Times of Israel. A new film brings together amateur footage spanning 60 years—from Jews sailing to pre-state Palestine to an eight-couple wedding to Menachem Begin making peace with Anwar Sadat.