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Friday, January 27

Whose Holocaust?

 

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."  READ ON
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Thursday, January 26

Listening to Saddam

By Alex Joffe

In the debate over Iran's nuclear intentions, the question of rationality looms menacingly. How do Iran's rulers perceive cause and effect, calculate costs and benefits, and make policy decisions in order to maximize the well-being of their state and citizens? How do they understand the outside world?  READ ON
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Wednesday, January 25

Trotsky Eats and Runs

By Micah D. Halpern

I first heard the name Trotsky when I was seven years old. My grandfather, a Jewish tailor from Belarus who arrived in the goldene medine and pulled himself up by his bootstraps to own a men's suit factory in New York, had just gotten a swept-back haircut. He called it a Trotsky.  READ ON
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Tuesday, January 24

Siren Songs

By Shlomo Zuckier

"For your voice is sweet and your appearance pleasant" (Song of Songs 2:14). On the basis of this verse, Jewish law prohibits a man's listening to kol ishah, a woman's voice in song. Unlikely as it may seem, this prohibition has sparked a controversy that could shake the foundations of Israel's self-defense and self-definition.  READ ON
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Monday, January 23

A Very English Institution

By Simon Gordon

Last week some 600 Jews converged on the hamlet of Kerhonkson in upstate New York for Limmud NY, a three-day "marketplace of Jewish ideas." Now in its eighth year, the volunteer-run Limmud NY is open to professional teachers and amateurs alike.  READ ON
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Friday, January 20

Whither the Alawites

By Elliot Jager

Time does not appear to be on the side of Syria's minority Alawite-led regime. President Bashar Assad has reportedly been offered asylum in Moscow, which wants an orderly transition that will preserve Russian strategic interests. Other stories have Assad and his loyalists preparing mountain strongholds for a last-ditch stand.  READ ON
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Thursday, January 19

Jerusalem's Ego and Id

By Alex Joffe

Biography is not the same as history. Biography charts the outer and inner life of a person—character, spirit, morality, emotion, perhaps even soul. History, by contrast, incorporates different narratives and pieces of evidence, seeks out new data, then rises above all the fragments with a synthesis.  READ ON
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Wednesday, January 18

Our Defenders at the CIA

By Jonathan Neumann

News flash: Top-secret intelligence memos written during the last years of the Bush administration describe covert activities—in intelligence parlance, a "false flag" operation—by Israeli Mossad officers, posing as American CIA agents.  READ ON
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Tuesday, January 17

America the Biblical

By Diana Muir Appelbaum

The Greeks did not invent equality. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and the gang famously believed that the rich are different from you and me—not merely because they are shaped by their privileges but because they are actually, literally made of superior stuff.  READ ON
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Monday, January 16

Gender Trouble

By Yehudah Mirsky

Suddenly, it seems, gender segregation is everywhere in Israel—buses, army bases, Jerusalem sidewalks, Beit Shemesh schoolyards and, above all, the front pages. What is going on here? Why is all this happening now? Let's begin with the second question.  READ ON
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Today's Picks RSS

Will Israel Attack Iran?  Ronen BergmanNew York Times.  Can Israel severely damage Iran's nuclear sites? Would a strike have international legitimacy? Is this the point of last resort? For the first time, at least some of Israel's leaders believe that the response to all of these questions is yes.  SAVE

How Many Came Out of Egypt?  Shlomo KarniTorah Musings.  David Ben-Gurion did the math.  SAVE

Rules for Revisionists  Jonathan S. TobinContentions.  By brandishing the name of Saul Alinsky, does Newt Gingrich intend to send out anti-Semitic dog whistles to the Right? Nonsense.  SAVE

Our Ethiopian Brothers  Elad UzanJerusalem Post.  Why haven't Israelis come to the aid of Ethiopian Jews, as they have for African non-Jews?  SAVE

"My Name is Daniel Pearl"  Giulio MeottiYnet.  The barbarous murder of this American Jew, ten years ago this week, didn't awaken global public opinion to the most significant truth of our times: Today, every Jew in the world is on the frontlines of war.  SAVE

Thursday, January 26

The Seed of Israel  David EllensonJewish Review of Books.  He has been accused of heresy and expelled from Shas, but Haim Amsalem's lenient approach to conversion in Israel may yet be a blueprint for a more unified nation.  SAVE

Courting China  Jerusalem Post.  Given its erstwhile alliance with the Arab nations and current support for Iran, China is not Israel's most likely partner. Yet economic ties between Israel and China have never been stronger.  SAVE

Bringing Darkness to Light  Eva FogelmanForward.  Agnieszka Holland's Oscar-nominated In Darkness is a vivid and nuanced portrayal of Jews escaping wartime Poland and an important testament to the righteousness of their rescuer.  SAVE

Majority Rule  Abraham CooperFox News.  As Western leaders and human rights activists fete democracy in Egypt, they turn a blind eye to the increasing restrictions being placed on Egypt's Jewish and Christian minorities.  SAVE

Then They Came for the Jews  Matthew FishbaneTablet.  With his latest assault on the upper classes and persistent attacks on Israel, President Hugo Chavez has left Venezuela's Jewish community facing a choice between emigration and persecution. (With photos)  SAVE

A Stunning Discovery  Judy Siegel-ItzkovichJerusalem Post.  As Holland, among other countries in Europe, seeks to ban Jewish ritual slaughter, new research demonstrating that stunning animals does not minimize their suffering has come not a moment too soon.  SAVE

Wednesday, January 25

Maple Leaf and Olive Branch  Harold WallerH-Net.  Canada's desire to distinguish itself from the U.S. and UK sometimes led it away from the policy of "scrupulous impartiality" that it wished to adhere to in the Middle East.  SAVE

Academe Award  Elli Fischer, Shai SecundaJewish Review of Books.  Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, Footnote is a work of serious philosophical inquiry, cloaked in winking academic gossip for those in the know.  (Here, an interview with the director.SAVE

A Biographer’s Ethics  Michael McDonaldWilson Quarterly.  "Solzhenitsyn up close turned out to be a far less saintly figure than he had seemed from afar . . . [but] Koestler, who has always had a bad reputation for his character, grew in my estimation."  SAVE

Family Romance  Benjamin IvryForward.  In the Freud family letters, the figure of Jacob Bernays—classical philologist, Orthodox Jew, homosexual, and deep influence on his brother-in-law Sigmund—comes to light.  SAVE

Tuesday, January 24

The New Normal  Jackson DiehlWashington Post.  In spite of the Islamist ideology of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, Turkey may prove to be a key U.S. ally in the Middle East during the coming decades.  SAVE

A Mind Alone  Stefany Anne GolbergSmart Set.  In a collection of the Austrian novelist Joseph Roth's correspondence, there aren't any letters written to his parents, or to those who were perhaps his closest friends. There are no love letters—or any letters at all—to his wife.  SAVE

Digital Davening  Michael J. BroydeTorah Musings.  Smartphones have already begun to supplant traditional siddurim; but the potential of the digital revolution to transform the experience of prayer has barely been realized.  SAVE

Dividing the Waters  Susan Hattis RolefJerusalem Post.  A new French report on water usage in the Jordan Valley allows political bias against Israel to mask the real challenges of water conservation facing every country in the region.  SAVE

Revisiting the Reich  Ron RosenbaumSmithsonian.  William L. Shirer's 1960 history of the Third Reich remains the seminal account of the philosophical roots of Nazism and a stark warning of the dangers of mass political movements.  SAVE

The Original Kosher Jesus  Fred MacDowellOn the Main Line.  150 years ago, Rabbi Elias Soloweyczk published commentaries on Matthew and Mark, aimed not at rejecting the Gospels but showing their concordance with the Talmud.  SAVE

Monday, January 23

Moses Descending Yosemite’s Half Dome  Edward RothsteinNew York Times.  By combining a focus on the lost and endangered with attention to the local and a taste for the avant-garde, the Magnes Museum helped define an approach to Judaism that was deliberately decentered.  SAVE

Strange Land  David HarrisHuffington Post.  Couldn't the New York Times find a writer without heavy-duty psychological baggage to pen a travel feature on Israel?  (Maybe not, but Matt Gross's article might still be a welcome narrative.)  SAVE

Dispatches from Madsville  Howard JacobsonIndependent.  There's a perverseness in making the very word 'Holocaust' sacred when the thing it denotes was an outbreak of mass barbarism that most of us still find near impossible to comprehend.  SAVE

Dishonoring MLK  Gil TroyJerusalem Post.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was quite clear: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews."  But one high school student has just won a writing award in King's name by slandering Israel.  SAVE

What is Modesty?  Dov LinzerNew York Times.  The Talmud forbids a man from gazing sexually at even a woman's "smallest finger." Does it thus require women to cover their hands? No; it places the burden of self-control on men.  SAVE

Jewish Ideas Weekly

Bo: Pharaoh and Macbeth

 

Exodus 10:1–13:16

By Moshe Sokolow

Bo: Pharaoh and Macbeth
Our parashah begins: "God said to Moses: 'Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants in order to place these signs of mine in his midst.'" Indeed, this motif of the hardened heart already appeared in last week's portion and recurs nearly a dozen times in the context of the ten plagues. The problem, however, is this: If Pharaoh and the Egyptians were denied free will in their dealings with Moses, how can their subsequent punishment be justified?

Continue Reading "Pharaoh and Macbeth"  Moshe SokolowJewish Ideas DailySAVE

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