History

The New Shimon Peres

Marking his eighty-seventh birthday this week, Israel's president flew to Cairo for a two-hour meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, captured headlines in Britain for his frank talk about British attitudes toward Jews and Zionism, visited bereaved military families, and welcomed new North American immigrants at Ben-Gurion airport. Perceived not so long ago as among Israel's most polarizing and untrustworthy figures, Shimon Peres nowadays enjoys unprecedented status. A politician who once mercilessly undermined prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin stands loyally behind Benjamin Netanyahu while speaking publicly as an above-the-fray statesman.

The Kook Perplex

In late May, a file began to circulate on the Internet of a lengthy and hitherto-unknown work by Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), one of the greatest and most consequential of modern Jewish thinkers. Though he died 75 years ago, Kook's provocative ideas still play a pivotal role in contemporary Israeli political and religious debates, and the long-playing controversies surrounding his literary estate reflect something of the aura of his mystical personality and teachings. This latest revelation, and the round of polemics spurred by it, illustrate some enduringly high-voltage issues within Jewish life today.

Out of the Well of the Past

Jewish history was once regularly portrayed as a march from pre-modern stasis to modern revolution and change. This picture held its attractions, offering clearly marked battle lines for later proponents on either side of the ongoing ideological struggles between traditionalists and modernizers. By now, however, we have been well instructed in the deceptive simplicity of all such efforts to impress order on the relentless flux of history, which so often dissolves the closer we look at it.

Loving and Leaving Europe

According to a recent report in the European press, dozens of French Jews who, in the aftermath of World War II, were compelled to adopt Gallic-sounding names are now demanding to be allowed to revert to their Jewish originals. There is a deep irony here: the supposedly Jewish names being reclaimed are in fact the artificial and often arbitrary ones originally imposed in 1787 by the Austrian emperor, Joseph II, as part of his larger aim of integrating the Jews of Central Europe into Germanic society and culture.

In the Cage of Feeling

Last week marked the hundredth birthday of Natan Alterman, one of the greatest and most dramatic of modern Hebrew poets and, in another aspect of his persona, a compelling and strong-minded commentator on contemporary events.

Tisha b’Av Now

Tomorrow is Tisha b'Av, the traditional day of fasting and lamentation for the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the sorrows of Jewish history.  But ours is a moment of unprecedented Jewish sovereignty and unparalleled Jewish prosperity. And so, many are asking, why bother?

The Other Talmud

A Jewish classic known as much for its obscurity as for its great significance took another step into the light this spring with the online publication of its oldest and most reliable version. The classic is the Jerusalem Talmud, and the version is a parchment manuscript, known as the Leiden manuscript, written in 1289 by a Jewish scholar and copyist in Rome.

Waiting for the (Political) Messiah

Israelis are not scheduled to go to the polls until October 2013, but no one would be astonished if some political upheaval forced earlier elections. Several high-profile contenders are already letting it be known that they could be enticed to provide the deliverance Israelis habitually crave, either by starting new parties or by taking leadership roles in existing ones. The saviors waiting in the wings include the photogenic television personality Yair Lapid, who promises to stand up to the "settlers" and the "ultra-Orthodox." Then there is the magnetic Aryeh Deri, once the top vote-getter of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Shas party,...

Tradition and Its Discontents

Judaism teaches the unity of body and soul. The soul has received most of the ink, but in recent decades historians have made an effort to give the body its say by uncovering and interpreting the material circumstances that, together with the learning and the spirituality, have comprised the weave of Jewish life. Prominent among these historians is the Hebrew University's Shaul Stampfer, whose new book, Families, Rabbis, and Education, explores the diverse currents coursing through the nineteenth-century Jewish heartlands of Eastern Europe.

The Mossad

Last week, Israel successfully deployed its fourth orbiting spy satellite, hailed by the country's intelligence community as delivering better than expected surveillance of "areas of interest." At the same time, Israel's human-intelligence apparatus, essential as ever to the Jewish state's survival, has come under severe criticism for two of its recent missions: the presumed liquidation of the senior Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai and the ill-prepared interdiction of the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla. Meanwhile, Lebanese authorities continue to sweep up reputed Israeli agents for spying on Hizballah.