Holocaust
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.
Too Many Museums?Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Although the paint is still wet on Philadelphia's National Museum of American Jewish History, an announcement has just been made of a planned National Museum of the Jewish People in Washington, D.C., steps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and not far from two other Jewish museums.
The Night of the Murdered PoetsTuesday, August 16, 2011 by Nahma Sandrow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On August 12, 1952, thirteen major Soviet Jewish figures were executed for espionage, bourgeois nationalism, "lack of true Soviet spirit," and treason, including a plot to hand the Crimea over to American and Zionist imperialists.
John Lennon and the JewsFriday, August 5, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"It's not cool to be Jewish, or Negro, or Italian. It's just cool to be alive, to be around." So said Aretha Franklin. I know, because my father used to have the soul diva's wisdom hanging on the wall of his study at home. He also used to walk around in a t-shirt with "Miscegenate" emblazoned across the chest.
Imaginary Vampires, Imagined JewsMonday, July 11, 2011 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
1897 was a watershed year in Jewish history. And now, Jewish historians may consider adding a surprising entry to the list of that year's events that proved so repercussive in Jewish history: the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The Tourist’s DilemmaMonday, June 20, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On the southwest coast of Albania on the Ionian Sea, opposite the Greek island of Corfu, beneath the modern town of Saranda, lies the ancient city of Onchesmos. That ancient city had a synagogue.
Remember the FarhudMonday, May 30, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The end of 2,500 years of Jewish life in Iraq began during two days in June 1941. For 30 terrifying hours, mobs of marauding Iraqi Arabs, soldiers and civilians alike, killed 137 Jews and injured thousands more, pillaged scores of homes, and destroyed more than 600 Jewish-owned businesses.
Holocaust without EndWednesday, May 18, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Sixty-six years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust remains one of the central puzzles of human history. For Jews, the imperative is clear: to remember and to encourage others to remember. But remember what? Has the earnest dedication of both Jews and non-Jews to seek the meaning of the event and absorb its lessons ended by emptying it of meaning and lessons alike?
Israel: The MiracleTuesday, 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.
Calibrating DarknessMonday, 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
Editors' Picks
A Brutal Peace Tara Zahra, Nation. The postwar expulsion of German speakers from Czechoslovakia formed one more chapter in the story of Europe’s incapacity to reconcile the claims of democracy and nationalism.
One Family at a Time David Crossland, Spiegel. The International Tracing Service has helped Holocaust survivors find their families since 1946. But now its records are open for research on larger questions of the Holocaust.
Dumbing Down the Holocaust David Herman, Jewish Chronicle. Middlebrow fiction about the Holocaust not only reduces a serious subject to melodrama and kitsch but consigns the truly great literature to obscurity.
Bipolar Poland John Connelly, Nation. Historians of World War II have viewed Poland either as a nation of heroes or as a nation of collaborators. How can these two narratives be reconciled?
Romania’s Forgotten Holocaust Keno Verseck, Spiegel. Florin Iepan’s new documentary on the 1941 massacre of Odessa’s Jews by the Romanian army is a unique attempt to confront Romania’s role in the Holocaust. But 70 years on, the country is still not interested.
Lanzmann's Ladies Benjamin Balint, Weekly Standard. The memoir of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, known for his achievement in Shoah, focuses on other "achievements": "I am the only man with whom Simone de Beauvoir lived a quasi-marital existence."
Carlebach's Broken Mirror Shaul Magid, Tablet. “He told fantastical stories about a prewar Jewish world that never existed. He knew that. We knew that. But it didn’t matter.”
Martin Buber and the Holocaust Richard L. Rubenstein, New English Review. Martin Buber was the preeminent Jewish thinker of his generation and the intellectual leader of German Jewry during its darkest hour. So why does his theology ignore the Holocaust?
Leading Germany's Jews Charlotte Knobloch, Spiegel. The 80-year-old Holocaust survivor who leads Munich’s Jews says it wasn't until the 2006 inauguration of a synagogue in the city that she finally felt at home in Germany. (Interview by Susanne Beyer)
Love and Death at Auschwitz Ofer Aderet, Haaretz. It was decades before the Israeli woman opened the diary written by her first love, who died at Auschwitz. Now, aged 88, she has done so.