Home
Mothering and SmotheringTuesday, March 20, 2012 by Brauna Doidge | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When did "natural" become a synonym for "good" or "better"? Advertisers tell us that everything from our food to our skincare is better when it's used in its most natural state. But haven't the philosophers tried hard to get us out of the state of nature?
Redefining Religious ActivityFriday, February 17, 2012 by Meir Soloveichik | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In August of 1790, Moses Seixas, a leading member of the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, composed a letter to then President George Washington, who was visiting Newport. In his letter, Seixas gave voice to his people's love of America and its liberties.
In God They Trust?Thursday, February 9, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Stick an average alumnus of the Israeli public school system into a synagogue during morning prayers, and chances are they would be bewildered. Even if they could recollect an arid Bible class they had to endure long ago, what good would it do them? They'd still be lost.
In the Jewish Dark ContinentTuesday, November 22, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Most American Jews descend from ancestors who resided in the Pale of Settlement, the territory from the Black Sea to the Baltic in which Jews were confined by the Czars. A new book describes one effort to chart that territory.
Kosher FictionFriday, November 11, 2011 by Eitan Kensky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Haredi adventure stories are a curious but popular genre. There is the 2005 Yiddish-language film A gesheft ("A Deal"), the story of a Hasid-gone-bad out for revenge on the pious man he wrongly blames for his childhood misfortunes.
Lives of the Ex-HaredimTuesday, August 2, 2011 by Joshua Halberstam | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?" Juliet calls out in pristine Yiddish from the heights of her fire escape. Melissa (Malky) Weisz, who plays Juliet in the recent film Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish, probably asked the same question in a more vernacular Yiddish—and with very different expectations—in her earlier life.
Passover & the Repudiation of IdolatryFriday, April 15, 2011 by Moshe Sokolow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Asking questions is a trademark of the Passover seder. Prior to it, we can ask another question—this one having to do with a passage in the Haggadah about the second of the four sons.
Freedom TalesWednesday, 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.
Halakhah for AmericansFriday, March 18, 2011 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Asked in a 1975 New York Times interview how he had acquired his standing as America's most trusted authority in Jewish religious law (halakhah), Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895-1986) replied: ''If people see that one answer is good and another answer is good, gradually you will be accepted."
Thoroughly Modern MatzahThursday, March 25, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When Jews the world over sit down next week to mark the birth of Jewish history, matzah will figure prominently at the table. Matzah baking is an exacting task; according to traditional law, the entire process, from first kneading to exit from the oven, must be accomplished in 18 minutes flat, with not a speck of leaven in sight. For thousands of years, these specifications and others were laboriously met by hand. Yet this most ancient food has a modern history, too. The first matzah machine was invented in 1838 in France. With rabbinic approval, the technology moved steadily eastward. The...
Editors' Picks
Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out Shalom Carmy, Avi Woolf, Yitzchak Blau, Tradition. When the Beatles sang "fun is the one thing that money can't buy," they meant something beyond the passive absorption of an inexhaustible stream of mass-produced sights and sounds. (PDF)
Keep Religion out of Israeli Adoptions Jerusalem Post. When conversion becomes a condition for adoption, the process is easily distorted—by pressures on rabbinical conversion court judges and prospective parents.
The Hermeneutics of Hasidism Zackary Sholem Berger, Tablet. Although writers who reject the Hasidic world capture public attention, the really interesting literature comes from writers who struggle with Hasidism but love it too much to leave.
E-vil? Micah Stein, Tablet. The ultra-Orthodox rally against the Internet is not merely about pornography. It's about Facebook, filters, accountability, and the maintenance of rabbinic authority. And then it is also about pornography.
Judaism's Sexual Revolution Dennis Prager, Crisis. When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into heterosexual marriage, it changed the world—and made Western civilization possible. (1993)
Pop! Goes the Patriarchy Yoel Finkelman, H-Net. A new study offers a strong focus on the faults inherent in Orthodox masculinity without adequate discussion of its strengths.
There's a Key in My Challah! Jeffrey Saks, Torah Musings. Does the post-Passover tradition known as "shliss challah" derive from symbolic readings of the season's texts—or, rather, is it a Christian symbol of Jesus rising in the dough?
Trailing the Rabbis' Breadcrumbs Judith Shulevitz, Tablet. What is man? He who is capable of searching inside himself. What does he search for? Some dark or foreign matter that he has put there himself. With what does he search? The light of God, which is also in himself.
The Patrilineal Predicament Naomi Zeveloff, Forward. Nearly three decades after the Reform movement's landmark decision to accept patrilineal Jews, statistics confirm that the worst fears of critics have come true.
Village of Idiots Matti Friedman, Times of Israel. While the fables of Chelm have come to be seen as products of a quintessentially Jewish culture, their history begins not with Jews in Poland, but with Christians in Germany.