Modern Thinkers
Where Did the Gaon Go?Tuesday, December 18, 2012 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Eliyahu Stern's new book portrays the Vilna Gaon as Eastern Europe's Moses Mendelssohn. But can the ascetic, who backed the persecution of Hasidim, seriously be associated with individualism and democracy?
More Expensive by the DozenThursday, October 11, 2012 by Dara Horn | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
A hundred years ago, industrial efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth, Jr. claimed that children were “cheaper by the dozen.” Recently the economist Bryan Caplan made the modern version of the self-interested argument for producing more offspring. In an exclusive feature from the current issue of the Jewish Review of Books, novelist Dara Horn elegantly begs to differ. —The Editors
Adorno, Butler, and the Death of IronyFriday, September 28, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Irony cannot exist in isolation; something is ironic only in relation to a larger pattern of events or behavior. Every three years, the city of Frankfurt awards its Adorno Prize to honor scholarly achievement in philosophy, music, film, and theater.
The Hebrew Bible and the Human MindMonday, September 10, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Yoram Hazony has a bone to pick with Tertullian, the second-century Christian theologian who asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
Spinoza in ShtreimelsTuesday, September 4, 2012 by Carlos Fraenkel | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Philosophy professor Carlos Fraenkel wrote that “the cultural relativism that often underlies Western multicultural agendas [is] a much greater obstacle to a culture of debate than religion.” Today, in an exclusive preview from the Jewish Review of Books, Fraenkel relates how his theory fared among a group of Hasidim.
Until a Hundred TwentyTuesday, August 21, 2012 by Hillel Fradkin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Bernard Lewis has published many books on the history of the Middle East and Islam. On these subjects he is, simply, the pre-eminent authority. At 96, he has now published yet another book: a memoir.
Freud in ZionTuesday, July 3, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Three Jewishly-conflicted German speakers changed the course of modern history. By the time the first, Karl Marx, had died in 1883, Sigmund Freud and Theodor Herzl were rising stars in their twenties; later, they came to be neighbors living but a few doors apart on a Vienna street.
The Last Holy RebelThursday, June 21, 2012 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Some years ago, a friend asked what I thought was the more impressive title: "Rabbi," "Doctor," or (the often unwittingly self-parodying) "Rabbi Dr." You know, I said, there's a man in Israel who's one of the most impressive talmidei hakhamim I've ever known—and he's not "Rabbi" or "Doctor."
Killing RathenauWednesday, June 20, 2012 by Carole Fink | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Walther Rathenau was neither a typical German Jew nor a traditional German statesman. Born into a wealthy industrialist family that had disowned its Jewish beliefs and practices and gaining political office late in life, Rathenau was the quintessential outsider.
The Jewish Left, between History and RevelationMonday, June 11, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The association of Jews with leftist ideas and movements has been a fixture of Western politics for the past 150 years. But is the relationship logical and necessary, or is it historical and contingent?
Editors' Picks
Rabbis for Slavery Howard B. Rock, Tablet. Today, New York’s Bnai Jeshurun Synagogue is a bastion of progressive politics. But on the eve of the Civil War, its rabbi was a champion of slavery. A cautionary tale.
Rabbinical School Encounters Matt Abelson, SPME. “My willingness to criticize the Palestinians, in general, and their political leadership, specifically, was not mainstream.” A Conservative rabbi-in-training responds to Elliot Jager, and to his peers.
The Last Totalitarian Benjamin Kerstein, World Affairs. Noam Chomsky is more or less the last survivor of a group of intellectuals who thought systemic political violence was essentially a good thing. (Interview by Michael J. Totten)
Scholarship at the Fault Line Monica Osborne, New Republic. English departments and literary studies curricula have yet to acknowledge the significance of Jewish and midrashic thought to their disciplines.
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)
Between Tradition and Modernity Ari L. Goldman, Jewish Week. The same week in which the Conservative movement issued guidelines for performing same-sex marriages, it ruled against the use of computers, cell phones, and e-readers on Shabbat.
Who Knows Three? Peter Schäfer, New Republic. For Daniel Boyarin, it isn't enough to claim that a notion of two equally divine figures is a Jewish idea. Rather, he asserts that even the Trinity was present among the Jews before Jesus.
A Heretic in the Truth Zachary Micah Gartenberg, Jewish Review of Books. Spinoza takes Maimonides' characterization of miracles as divinely implanted—but still natural—anomalies in the regular course of things. Then Spinoza adds a twist.
1948: Palestine Betrayed Efraim Karsh, Elliot Jager, Jewish Ideas Daily. Zionist Jews were not interlopers in Palestine. The creation of the Jewish state was not an "original sin" foisted upon the Arab world. The tragic flight of the Palestinian refugees was overwhelmingly not the fault of the Zionists. To the contrary, at every momentous junction the Zionists opted for compromise and peace, the Arabs for intransigence and belligerency. This, in summary, is how most people once understood the Arab-Israel conflict. Today, however, as Israel marks its Independence Day, an entire generation has come to maturity believing a diametrically opposite "narrative" . . .
On the Roots of Israel's Culture Wars Menachem Mautner, Haaretz. The ongoing conflict between religious and secular worldviews expresses itself in competing visions of Israel's system of law. (Interview by David Green)