Education
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.
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.
Abuse Among the Orthodox: Bad News, Good NewsMonday, May 21, 2012 by Yoel Finkelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
First, the bad news: Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse occurs in Orthodox Jewish communities. Next, the worse news: Two recent New York Times stories are just the latest piece of evidence that Orthodox communities are often in denial and worse.
The Moral Costs of Jewish Day SchoolMonday, May 14, 2012 by Aryeh Klapper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
There is a lot of hand-wringing these days about whether the rising costs of Jewish day schools are sustainable. The discussion has been about money: How can we get more? How can we spend less? These questions miss the point.
Reading between the ListsWednesday, April 4, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
As long as humans have been writing, humans have been making lists and ranking things. The new Daily Beast/Newsweek list of "America's Top 50 Rabbis for 2012" is, like most American lists, whether of rabbis, cars, or colleges, designed to shape reality as much as reflect it.
Make Yourself a TeacherTuesday, March 27, 2012 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The meanings of "Torah" are inexhaustible, but its plainest sense is "teaching." It does not exist apart from being communicated. That circulation between human beings, and between humans and God, both gives Torah life and teaches us that Torah itself teaches life.
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."
Material WorldTuesday, February 21, 2012 by Michael Carasik | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When is a text not a text? When it is an object. When a Torah scroll is held up in the air so that congregants can view its columns of words, it is not being read. The words that the congregation chants are indeed found in the scroll, but in two different places.
Whose Holocaust?Friday, January 27, 2012 by Margot Lurie | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
For much of Europe, today is the UN-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has dedicated his address this year to children murdered by the Nazis, with the message that "the best tribute to the memory of these children is an ongoing effort to teach the universal lessons of the Holocaust, so that no such horror is visited upon future generations."
Human Rights and Religious WrongsFriday, January 13, 2012 by Jonathan Neumann | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Although the discourse on human rights has a long pedigree, traceable at least to early modern natural rights theory and politics, the philosophical case for human rights against one alternative, religion, has yet to be made.
Editors' Picks
Learning Law Young Michael Broyde, ELI Talks. Jewish day schools provide students with the functional equivalent of a first-year law school curriculum. (Video)
Whither Judaic Studies Departments? Bruce Kesler, New Criterion. In campus atmospheres often hostile to Israel, it's understandable that Jewish Studies departments would be defensive. But they must do more to justify themselves and to fulfill their mission.
Scholarship at the Fault Line Monica Osborne, New Republic. English departments and literary studies curricula have yet to acknowledge the significance of Jewish and midrashic thought to their disciplines.
Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out Shalom Carmy, Avi Woolf, Yitzchak Blau, Tradition. When the Beatles sang "fun is the one thing that money can't buy," they meant something beyond the passive absorption of an inexhaustible stream of mass-produced sights and sounds. (PDF)
Who Killed Hebrew in America? Cynthia Ozick, New Republic. Who could have foretold an eruption of Hebrew-generative genius on the American continent—which, having no offspring, then came to nothing?
"Rabbi, do we Jews believe in reincarnation?" Hyim Shafner, Institute for Jewish Ideas. "Knowing full well that much of Kabbalah, philosophy, and even Midrash does accept the notion of reincarnation, I tried to muster a definitive 'No!'"
Our Maronite Minority Eli Balshan, Times of Israel. Inspired in part by Eliezer Ben Yehuda, two Maronite brothers have taken it upon themselves to revitalize their ancestral Aramaic into a modern, living language.
Apathy and Anti-Zionism Seffi Kogen, Times of Israel. With their relentless scaremongering about anti-Zionism on campus, Jewish educational institutions have raised a generation apathetic not only to activism but to Israel itself.
We Failed Zuckerberg Dana Evan Kaplan, Forward. A Reform rabbi argues that his movement's pluralistic theology is to blame for the detachment of young Jews from their faith.
Israelis, Learn Arabic! Yaron Friedman, Ynet. Though tiny Israel is surrounded by more than 200 million Arabic speakers, its government has failed to treat Arabic studies with the appropriate seriousness.