USSR
Menachem Begin: A New LifeFriday, May 3, 2013 by Asaf Romirowsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Ensuring that another Holocaust would never take place was Menachem Begin's paramount concern, even when he was Prime Minister of Israel, pursuing Yasir Arafat in his Beirut bunker.
The Last BooksWednesday, May 1, 2013 by Jonathan Brent | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The invisible structures created by the Jewish people of Eastern Europe over a thousand years were given shape and transmitted through the books and the documents collected by YIVO. These structures still move us. If we do not know what they are, we do not know ourselves.
World War II and the Impossibility of Polish HistoryWednesday, February 27, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Must any history of Poland in the Second World War therefore put the Jews and the Holocaust at the center? If it does not, is that originality or revisionism?
Opening the Gates of JudaismWednesday, February 20, 2013 by Motti Inbari | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Given the demographic and spiritual decline among “biological” Jews in America, if we want to keep Judaism alive, we must do something that we haven't done for 2000 years: proselytize.
Antisemitism: Obsession or Logic?Thursday, January 24, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Robert Wistrich’s new book, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel, does much to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was and is a fixture of the Left—but stops short of that conclusion.
The ISI and the JewsThursday, January 3, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Pakistan's intelligence agency has supported Al Qaeda, Iran, and Lashkar-e-Taiba—the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008, killing six at Chabad. But the U.S. still treats it as an ally.
America and the Muslim Brotherhood: A RomanceThursday, December 20, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
One of the most consistent and depressing aspects of U.S.-Middle Eastern relations is the determination of our intellectuals and officials to defend Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
Chemical Warfare in the Middle East: A Brief HistoryThursday, December 13, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
At this time of Hanukkah’s memories of Syrian tyrants past, the Syrian tyrant present, Bashar al-Assad, has reportedly assembled chemical weapons for use against the rebellion.
The Twenty-Seventh ManWednesday, November 28, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On the night of August 12, 1952, a group of Yiddish writers was executed on Joseph Stalin’s orders for the crime of writing while Jewish. The executions were the tragic culmination of the grand romance between Jewish intellectuals and Marxism.
The PeacemakerMonday, November 26, 2012 by Seth Lipsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
About Menachem Begin the thing that I remember most was the way he talked. Begin wouldn’t say that he was born on the eve of the First World War; he’d say, as he did when a group of us from the Wall Street Journal interviewed him in 1981, that he was born “into” World War I.
Editors' Picks
Lone Survivor Marc Pitzke, Spiegel. Refused entry into Palestine in 1942, set adrift by Turkey in the Black Sea, the Struma was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, killing all 800 of its Jewish passengers—except one.
Nabokov's Jews Benjamin Ivry, Forward. A sympathetic portrayer of Jews in his fiction, Vladimir Nabokov denounced anti-Semitism as "philistinism in all its phases" in both Russia and the United States.
In Defense of Kissinger Robert D. Kaplan, Atlantic. Despite being America's first Jewish Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger dismissed the refuseniks as "not an American concern." But, "Kissinger’s realism was more effective than the humanitarianism of Jewish groups."
The Path of Most Resistance Benjamin Ginsburg, GovStud. It is commonly assumed that European Jews made little effort to resist the Nazis. But, if we "look for resistance where it was possible to resist," then "we come to a very different conclusion."
The Red and the White Benn Steil, Foreign Affairs. Jewish economist Harry Dexter White, architect of the post-war Western monetary system agreed at Bretton Woods, was suspected of being a Soviet spy. New research shows he was.
Surviving Stalin Ben Cohen, Tablet. Stalin's "Doctors' Plot" is now seen by many historians as the opening move of a grand plan to deport and eliminate Soviet Jews. They were saved only by Stalin's own death.
How Ike Screwed Up Suez Michael Doran, Washington Post. Defense Department nominee Chuck Hagel says he admires President Eisenhower’s handling of the Suez crisis. But Eisenhower looked back on Suez as his biggest foreign policy mistake.
Magnitizdat Sophie Pinkham, Paris Review. The samizdat literature that helped undermine the Soviet Union had a musical counterpart: bootlegged prison songs from the gulag, some mythologizing the Jewish gangsters of Odessa.
How We Freed Soviet Jewry Allison Hoffman, Tablet. Twenty-five years after 250,000 Americans gathered in Washington to demand freedom for the refuseniks, participants reflect on how momentous their march turned out to be. (Oral history)
Reading Kant to Kissinger Shlomo Avineri, Jewish Review of Books. In 1976, Shlomo Avineri met with Henry Kissinger to discuss Syria and Lebanon. But they ended up talking about Kant and Hegel—to the confusion of any Soviet eavesdroppers.