Article Archives

The Postmodern Golem

To Elizabeth Baer, the recent spate of golem literature, going beyond novels to comic books, artwork, even The X-Files, is an “intentional tribute to Jewish imagination as well as to the crucial importance of such imagination in the post-Holocaust period.”

I. B. Singer’s Last Laugh

Like millions of his fellow immigrants to America, Isaac Bashevis Singer started over. In the beginning, he was a deadly serious Polish-Yiddish writer with world-literary ambitions.

Is Romantic Love a Jewish Value?

Today is the happiest day in the Hebrew calendar.  According to the Mishnah, Tu b’Av (the 15th of the month of Av) was a joyous occasion on which the unmarried women of ancient Jerusalem would dance in the vineyards, hoping to find a match.

The Daily Page: A “Siyum”-posium

UPDATE: New posts as of 8/3/12, 1:11 a.m. 

First, Build an Art School.

Before Zionists built Israel’s first kibbutz, first university, or first luxury hotel, they built an art academy. Bezalel opened in 1906, not because the Jewish homeland needed an art school more than it needed a university but because the Zionist leadership thought an art school would be an effective motor of economic growth.

Tal Tales

Tomorrow, the Deferral of Military Service for Yeshiva Students Law (Temporary Measure), better known as the Tal Law, will expire.  This law is not just any law: it is the latest enactment of the so-called “status quo arrangement” that frames the uneasy relationship between Israel’s Haredi and secular populations, and between religion and State more generally. 

The Artist in the Parking Lot

"Once upon a time in a kingdom, in a Middle Eastern democratic country, there was a watchman. The watchman sat for days on end in a booth, in the southern end of a pretty Mediterranean city, in a concrete parking lot . . ."

Endearment in the Wilderness

First of all, let’s stipulate that the midbar in Sefer B'midbar, the fourth of the five books of Moses which we have just finished reading, is not necessarily a desert. 

Ye Sacred Muses

Are Jewish mourners forbidden from listening to music?  On the face of it, the prohibition is absolute.  Certainly, it is forbidden for mourners to attend concerts, or performances in general.  But what about liturgical music, the music of the synagogue?

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Patient Jihad

Mohamed Morsi’s recent election as president of Egypt has proved a matter of concern.  A candidate from the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, many fear that Morsi’s victory will threaten Egyptian-Israeli peace.