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Mentored by GauguinTuesday, May 18, 2010 by Benjamin Ivry | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A Paris exhibit reestablishes Meijer de Haan, an energetic painter inspired by Jewish themes, as a considerable artistic force.
Israel’s Nuclear WeaponsTuesday, May 18, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
On April 5, 2009, speaking before throngs of supporters in a Prague square, President Barack Obama declared America's commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. With this as an apparent impetus, the Arab world has pressed for greater international attention to . . . Israel's nuclear activities. It did so most recently at a Washington conference devoted to keeping nuclear materials out of terrorist hands, and at a subsequent review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at UN headquarters in New York. Under Arab prodding, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the U.S., issued a statement calling...
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 by Avi Shafran | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
A holiday characterized by no specific ritual act, Shavuot recapitulates the Israelites' embrace of the Torah at Sinai in a mood of perfect acceptance.Way West
Monday, May 17, 2010 by Polina Olsen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
According to a new, richly documented history of Jewish settlement along the Pacific coast, the frontier spirit created something unique in American Jewish experience.Israel’s Elites
Monday, May 17, 2010 by Alexander Yakobson | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Thanks to the ethos of Zionism, the country's business, political, and defense elites are integrated; its anti-Zionist elite, by contrast, is almost entirely Ashkenazi.Captivated by the Scrolls
Monday, May 17, 2010 by Tibor Krausz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
In a late-life summing up, the prolific Oxford scholar Geza Vermes has published a comprehensive look at "the miraculous discovery and true significance" of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the community that produced them.The Banality of Anti-Semitism
Monday, May 17, 2010 by Benjamin Kerstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
Steeling oneself against an evil that presents itself with an ordinary, innocuous face.Radical Islam and Western Liberals
Monday, May 17, 2010 by Anthony Julius | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
In his new study of contemporary political morality, Paul Berman exposes the repudiation by liberal intellectuals of liberal values and ideals.
Book of RuthMonday, May 17, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The biblical book of Ruth, read later this week on the holiday of Shavuot, works in brief, gentle strokes to limn a powerful story of loss, recovery, and redemption. The story takes place in harvest season, in a prosaic world in which the actions of divine providence are coterminous with the yield of human goodness. "This scroll speaks neither of impurity nor purity, neither of forbidden nor permitted," says a famous midrash. "And why was it written? To teach you how great is the reward of those who mete out lovingkindness" (Midrash Ruth Rabbah 2:16). The theme asserts itself in the book's...
Friday, May 14, 2010 by Jo Milgrom and Joel Duman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Picks
The holiday marks God's giving of the Torah to Israel at Mount Sinai. In an illuminated manuscript from 1296, what are the Israelites doing crowded behind a window, inside the mountain?
