Pre-Modern & Modern
Rousseau, Melody, and ModeFriday, May 17, 2013 by Ben Elton | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Though best remembered today for his political philosophy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also a careful student of music. But his conclusions are undermined by the liturgical music of Ashkenazi Jews.
Leaving the GhettoFriday, February 8, 2013 by Jacob Katz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Was there any possibility," asks Jacob Katz in this 1996 Commentary essay, "that the Jews collectively might have been accepted in Europe on their own terms—that is, as a community, with a religion opposed to Christianity?"
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.
Catholics, Jews, and Jewish CatholicsMonday, June 18, 2012 by Daniel Johnson | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Jews and Catholics in the English-speaking world have so much in common that they ought to make common cause more often than they actually do. The friction between them that sometimes catches fire is, as often as not, based on mutual ignorance and mistrust.
At the Edge of the AbyssTuesday, June 12, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The striking thesis of a new work is that even before Hitler came to power, the prognosis for European Jewry was bleak: "The demographic trajectory was grim and, with declining fertility, large-scale emigration, increasing outmarriage, and widespread apostasy, foreshadowed extinction."
The Baron-Cohens and the Problem of EvilThursday, May 31, 2012 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The pervasiveness of evil and the suffering of innocents have confounded religious believers throughout history. Jews have produced a vast literature that attempts to reconcile God's justice with evil's apparent dominion.
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.
Scholarship and Anti-Semitism at YaleMonday, March 26, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Almost a year has passed since Yale University shuttered the five-year-old Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism, known by the unwieldy acronym "YIISA," and replaced it with the Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism, or "YPSA."
Hitting the JackpotThursday, March 8, 2012 by Micah Stein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Who doesn't like Purim? Besides the costumes and candy, the story itself has all the politics, sex, and violence of a juicy HBO series. In case you missed it: "Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted to destroy the Jews, and had cast a pur—that is, a lottery—with intent to crush and exterminate them."
Cyrus, Ahmadinejad, and the Politics of PurimWednesday, March 7, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
At this week's pre-Purim meeting in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss Iran's nuclear threat to Israel, Netanyahu gave Obama a present: the book (or m'gilah, scroll) of Esther, which tells how the Jewish heroine foiled Haman's plot to kill the Jews of ancient Persia.
Editors' Picks
Divided by Faith David J. Davis, Imaginative Conservative. “Where modern tolerance does not permit any rival to the authority of rationalism and secular humanism, pre-Enlightenment Europe was establishing policies that permitted worldviews which its rulers saw as heretical.”
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.
S/Z Benjamin Ivry, Forward. Was Stefan Zweig's habit of sending each of his new books to Sigmund Freud an amicable gesture or an invitation to diagnose and cure?
Anti-Semitism without Jews Ben Cohen, Tablet. A prominent challenger to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez isn't Jewish, but his roots are—reason enough for the regime to launch a smear campaign.
The "Eikhah Problem" Dara Horn, ELI talks. Why do Jews persist in believing that anti-Semitism is their own fault? (Video)
Intellectual Guilt Jonathan S. Tobin, Contentions. The spate of attacks on French Jews since the Toulouse massacre flows from not just the anti-Semitism of Arab leaders but its legitimation by the European intelligentsia.
Jews of Yemen, Get Out! Lyn Julius, Times of Israel. The few dozen Jews who remain in Yemen—many incentivized against aliyah by the Satmar movement—insist that Jewish life is good in Tzanaa despite a death toll attesting to the contrary.
Sacha Baron Cohen Never Forgets Steve Sailer, Taki's. The comedian's four main characters have been parodies of present or past foes of the Jews. At this rate, he might even get around to making a movie mocking the Amalekites.
The Spirit is Unwilling Mary Pilon, New York Times. Why won't the president of the International Olympic Committee allow for a moment of silence, in "the Olympic spirit," on the tragic anniversary of the 1972 murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches?
The Reality of Race Jon Entine, Forward. Historical analysis now depends not only on pottery shards, flaking manuscripts, and faded coins, but on something far less ambiguous: DNA. And the study of Jewish DNA yields some surprising findings.