Anti-Semitism
Lambs to the SlaughterWednesday, August 22, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Last week, the normally cautious Jewish community of Amsterdam took the unusual step of describing a member of the Dutch parliament as a "serious danger to Jews in the Netherlands and consequently Europe as a whole."
Iranian Jewry TodayThursday, August 16, 2012 by Shai Secunda | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In late June 2012, the Vice President of the Islamic Republic of Iran addressed an international conference on the proliferation of illicit drugs. He acknowledged his country’s extensive border with Afghanistan, the largest producer of illegal opium in the world. But he also blamed the crisis on the Babylonian Talmud.
The Month of ReturnTuesday, August 14, 2012 by Tevi Troy and Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The Jewish month of Av will soon become Ellul, and mourning for the destruction of the Temples will give way to repentance for our sins. It is time for introspection; and, as we contemplate our relationships with others and with the Divine, questions about penitence, forgiveness, change, and mortality itself inevitably arise.
The Last Berber JewsFriday, August 10, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
As a child, the French filmmaker Kamal Hachkar learned the Berber language from his grandparents in Tinghir, a Berber oasis city east of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. As an adult he discovered that the now exclusively Muslim town once had a substantial Jewish community.
Danube BluesThursday, July 12, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Be sure not to wear a kippah on the street," a veteran Hungarian-Israeli businessman cautioned as we disembarked at Budapest's Ferihegy Airport. With public opinion surveys showing it to be among the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe, I took warnings to be Jewishly discreet to heart throughout our visit to the Hungarian capital.
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.
Brandeis and Zionism, In and Out of LoveTuesday, June 19, 2012 by Evan Moffic | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The Supreme Court is once again poised to define the role of government in American society; and Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, would have recognized the terms of the debate.
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.
The Aircraft PlotFriday, June 15, 2012 by Malka Margolin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Forty-two years ago today, on June 15, 1970, a group of Soviet dissidents gathered at Smolny Airport outside Leningrad. They had bought all the seats on a 12-passenger aircraft headed 240 miles northwest to Priozersk, near the Finnish border.
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."
Editors' Picks
Are Christians the New Jews? Yitzchok Adlerstein, Patheos. With Islamist attacks on Christians commonplace from Nigeria to Pakistan, Christians have replaced Jews as numerically the most persecuted people in the world.
. . . To The Black Rose Palash R. Ghosh, International Business Times. In 1904 the townsfolk of Limerick, Ireland, boycotted Jewish businesses and forced the town’s 150 Jews to leave. As late as 1970, the town’s mayor defended the action.
Putting a Price on Philanthropy Daniel Pipes, Philanthropy Daily. As university faculties become increasingly hostile to Israel, Jewish philanthropists who want to give Zionism a voice on campus need a better strategy. Here is one idea.
Anti-Judaism: A Western Tradition Adam Kirsch, Tablet. “Anti-Judaism,” says David Nirenberg, is not an “archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought” but “one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.”
The Pope's Jewish Legacy Brad Hirschfield, Washington Post. Pope Benedict XVI antagonized some Jewish leaders. But he confronted the Holocaust and the Church's historic persecution of Jews with honesty and integrity.
Britain’s New Jews David Dee, Jewish Chronicle. By promoting participation in sports, the Anglo-Jewish establishment transformed Eastern European immigrants from aliens to “Englishmen and women of the Mosaic persuasion”—at the expense of their Judaism.
J'Accuse! Lee Smith, Weekly Standard. Despite pressure from France and Germany, Bulgaria has blamed Hizballah for the July 2012 bombing that killed 5 Israelis—and made the E.U.'s refusal to blacklist Hizballah untenable.
Should Jews Leave Britain? Douglas Murray, Spectator. As British society becomes increasingly anti-Zionist, Anglo-Jewry will have to dissociate from Israel to remain welcome in Britain. The process has already begun.
A Tale of Two Pamphlets Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. As England debated readmitting Jews, an anonymous pamphlet blamed Jews for the deaths of Christian children. An answering pamphlet absolved the Jews—but blamed Catholic priests.
Community, Covenant, and Commitment George E. Johnson, Jewish Ideas and Ideals. While Joseph B. Soloveitchik ruled out religious collaboration with non-Orthodox Jews, he advocated political unity. But since his death, American Jewry has fractured.