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The Twenty-Seventh Man

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.  

Does Jacob Hate Esau?

Jews have traditionally kept non-Jews at arm’s length.  The rabbinic approach to anti-Semitism may be summarized as Halakhah hi b’yadu’a she-Eisav sonei et Yaakov, “It is an established normative principle that Esau hates Jacob.” 

Iranian Jewry Today

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.

French Lessons

The saga that captured headlines around the world last week came to an end when Mohamed Merah—who had murdered four people, including three children, at the Ozer Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, France—was shot dead by French police. Before his death, Merah told police negotiators that he was a member of al-Qaeda.

The Wages of Durban

In the days just prior to the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) was very much in the news, and for reasons that are altogether relevant to the mass murder that took place on September 11, 2001.

Frisco Kids

Everyone knows the caricature of a New York Jew: intellectual, neurotic, reflexively liberal. In recent years, the reach of the caricature has expanded to cover not just New York Jews but urban Jews on America's "left coast." But a new book comprehensively and compellingly describes a Jewish population whose liveliness belies any stereotype.

The New Enemies of Circumcision

Among the practices that have characterized the Jewish people over the millennia, surely none has been observed more widely, or more faithfully, than circumcision.

The Anthropology of AIPAC

Few events in contemporary American Jewish life generate as much passion as the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), held in Washington this year on May 22-24. The best way to view the over 10,000 conference participants may be in terms of a tribe or small society.

From the Four Corners

Are most Jews white? The impression that this is so is partially the result of the calamitous and decimating events of the 20th century, in which the great centers of Europe were lost to Nazi genocide while those of the Middle East and North Africa were lost to Islam.

Bi-Polar Europe

Last month, Western intelligence services uncovered a plot by Arab men holding European citizenship to carry out simultaneous shooting strikes in France, Germany, and Britain.  The United States apparently thwarted the attacks in a targeted killing campaign using drone aircraft against suspected Taliban- and al-Qaeda-backed terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghan border.