Modern Times
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.
(F)rum RunnersWednesday, May 23, 2012 by Lawrence J. Epstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Prohibition is perennially making a comeback, at least in the media; and this is one of those revival times. It began with the HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire, now in its second season, set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City and priding itself on its historical accuracy.
Sending Mein Kampf Back to SchoolTuesday, May 22, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Important literature can't be kept under wraps forever. A case in point is Mein Kampf. The German state of Bavaria, which holds the German copyright, has blocked the book's publication within Hitler's homeland.
Labor PainsWednesday, May 16, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
If Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labor Party, emerges victorious from the country's next general election, he will become the first Jewish Prime Minister to inhabit Number 10 Downing Street since Benjamin Disraeli renovated the innards of that venerable residence in 1877.
Either/OrthodoxyTuesday, May 15, 2012 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Belying the regimented connotation of the word "orthodox," Orthodox Judaism is by far the most diverse stream of Judaism, encompassing such incompatible types as rationalists and mystics, West Bank settlers and peaceniks, college professors and obscurantists, feminists and male chauvinists.
Find, Fix, FinishTuesday, May 1, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
What is the threat? Al-Qaeda? "Terrorism"? "Violent religious extremism"? Israeli analysts call it "global jihad," but U.S. leadership has carefully circumscribed it as "al-Qaeda" or, even more narrowly, personified it as Osama bin Laden and his minions, hijackers of planes and Islam.
Editors' Picks
Turning Sun Into Rain Anav Silverman, Tazpit. Making fresh water through desalination is too expensive for many poor countries. But new Israeli technology can make the process cheaper—and better.
Ignore Anti-Semitism: Bernstein’s Rules David Bernstein, Forward. Has a fringe group announced an anti-Israel demonstration on campus? Odds are that it’s Israeli and Jewish sources who will give them the publicity they want.
Don’t Know Much ’bout Orthodoxy Yair Rosenberg, Tablet. New York media think an Orthodox woman running for political office is an anomaly among females who are cloistered, uneducated, and subservient. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Nora Knows What to Do Ariel Levy, New Yorker. “Those endless women-in-film panels. It’s, like, just do it! Just do it . . . It’s my ongoing argument with a whole part of the women’s movement.” A profile of Nora Ephron, who died yesterday at age seventy-one. (2009)
Soviet Spring Claire Berlinski, Tablet. A new book claims that Soviet interference in the Middle East has had far greater impact than is generally acknowledged—stretching to the current collapse of its former client states.
Confessions of a Narcissist David Rieff, Nation. Claude Lanzmann's memoir is a self-indulgent failure. But Shoah is a work of genius, and that does indeed justify a life.
The Munich Files Gunther Latsch, Klaus Wiegrefe, Spiegel. Files just released on the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics show that the terrorists received assistance from German neo-Nazis—who were let off virtually scot-free.
Return to Vienna Lisa Silverman, H-Net. Jews who grew up in cosmopolitan pre-war Vienna came back after the war to find themselves strangers at home. Yet Austria's capital still fascinates Jewish writers.
Disunited Synagogue David Cesarani, New Statesman. While some at the New Statesman may still believe Jews to be a powerful enemy within, Anglo-Jewry has never agreed on anything—whether religious practice, Zionism, or the admittance of Jewish refugees.
Accounting for Abbas Jonathan Schanzer, Foreign Policy. If Mahmoud Abbas has struggled to match Yasser Arafat as a popular leader, he has proven to be at least as adept as his predecessor in embezzling funds.