Zionism

Religion and State in Israel

I want to make an argument for limiting the role of the Israeli state in maintaining Jewish institutions. I do so, however, as one who wishes to see an expansion of the influence of traditional Judaism in the Israeli public square. Read in full on Mosaic.

Secularism and Its Discontents

In an essay first published December 17, 2010, Yehudah Mirsky examines a defense of Jewish secularism and finds it—and Jewish secularism itself—wanting.

Beyond the Giants

Strange as it may sound, my idea of Israel did match reality.  I’ve never imagined it to be some spotless utopia where everybody knows your name.  It is a land haunted by terror and tragedy, fear and doubt.  And yet it’s the land where God has chosen to reveal Himself to man. 

A Time Capsule

Petitions (kvitlekh) addressed to the 19th-century miracle worker Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher provide something almost never found in hoary Hebrew tomes or official Polish documents: windows into the struggles and secret anxieties of everyday Jews in Eastern Europe.

Menachem Begin: A New Life

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 Politics of Yiddish

Jews who hold on to, or reach back for, the Yiddishkeyt of Yiddish yearn not merely for a declining language but for the social and political ideal that seems embedded in it.  

Zionism Before Herzl

In 1876, 21 years before Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, a non-Jewish woman, writing for an English audience, published a novel with a powerful Zionist message.  She went by the name of George Eliot. 

The New Rosh Hashanah

The Jewish New Year is characterized by an uneasy combination of stock-taking and solemn celebration.  Yom Ha’atzma’ut, as the birthday of the Jewish state, is beginning to acquire a similar character.

The Challenge of Sovereignty

On the eve of Israel's independence, David Ben-Gurion sat alone, questioning whether a people so long accustomed to being the victims of sovereign power could take responsibility for themselves.

On Silence

Eschewing Jewish expressions of mourning, Israel's founding generations shaped a national ethos of silence and self-restraint, which found expression in the words of poet David Shimoni: “Don’t mourn, don’t cry/ at a time like this./ Don’t lower your head,/ Work! Work!”