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Unlikely PairsFriday, January 15, 2010 by Barbara Sofer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
In a new book, a veteran teacher offers readings of biblical narratives that she suggests must be read in light of each other.Sailing to Byzantium
Friday, January 15, 2010 by Benny Ziffer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Dodging the winter rains, a writer warms himself and his memories in the city of his youth.The House of Camondo
Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Benjamin Ivry | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
An exemplary exhibit in Paris traces the fortunes and tragic fate of a Sephardi banking family that made priceless bequests to the French nation.
Let My People InThursday, January 14, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Debates over conversion to Judaism show no sign of abating, least of all in Israel. Last week, the legal adviser to the country's chief rabbinate declared that all conversions may retroactively be annulled at any time. In the ensuing firestorm of criticism, even some on the religious Right chimed in, especially those reflecting a historically more lenient Sephardi approach. A great deal of institutional politics is involved here, including between the ultra-Orthodox in Israel and the Modern Orthodox in the United States; some of this came to light in the recent disgrace and resignation of an ultra-Orthodox foe of the moderates....
Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Christopher Rollston | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Questioning the claim that a recently deciphered inscription represents the oldest Hebrew writing ever found.The Arab Dilemma
Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Philip Terzian | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A new book by a close observer argues that the Arab world, though beset by self-destructive furies, is not so much in decline as in transition.No “Breakthroughs,” Please
Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Elliott Abrams | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Between Israel and the Palestinians, neither direct negotiations nor shuttle diplomacy will work right now; the American focus should be on building up legal and political institutions in the Palestinian Authority.
The Harshness of CreationLike the 2004 tsunami that devastated southeast Asia, yesterday's catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, a poverty-stricken country with a legacy of home-grown violence and suffering, inevitably provoked the terrible question: where was God? One answer derives from Jewish religious sources, and specifically from the teachings of the Kabbalah. It has to do with tzimtzum, or contraction: that is, God's own contraction and limitation of Himself in order to make space for the finite—and invariably flawed—worlds of physical nature and human action. The idea was most famously developed in Safed, Palestine by the 16th-century kabbalist Isaac Luria as part of a complicated, esoteric myth...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Anat Lapidot-Firilla | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A consequence not of Israeli policy but of a strategic shift in Turkey's perception of its place in Muslim civilization and international power politics.Tossing the Genetic Dice
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Sachin Prashar | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Do India's Pathans, the ethnic group at the heart of the Taliban, have Jewish roots? Whatever the DNA may show, today's Pathans are as hostile to Israel as are Muslims elsewhere.
