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Getting Birthright Wrong Getting Birthright Wrong
Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by Philip Getz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In mid-June, The Nation magazine, which for decades has provided a special platform for Jewish critics of Zionism, published an article by a young alumna of Birthright Israel, the organization that since 1999 has sent 260,000 young Diaspora Jews (including this writer) on free ten-day tours of the Holy Land.
The Forgotten Festival The Forgotten Festival
Monday, June 6, 2011 by Michael Carasik | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The holiday of Shavuot, which begins this year on Tuesday evening, is the orphan among Jewish holidays; it is the forgotten festival. Let me count the ways.
Holocaust without End Holocaust without End
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Sixty-six years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust remains one of the central puzzles of human history. For Jews, the imperative is clear: to remember and to encourage others to remember. But remember what? Has the earnest dedication of both Jews and non-Jews to seek the meaning of the event and absorb its lessons ended by emptying it of meaning and lessons alike?
Messianic Temptations Messianic Temptations
Thursday, April 7, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The downfall of Moshe Katsav, the former president of Israel recently convicted and sentenced on a rape charge, is a many-sided episode—involving his crimes, the media circus around the judicial proceedings against him, and the private and public meanings of his disgrace.
Jewish Studies in Decline? Jewish Studies in Decline?
Monday, March 28, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Reports prepared recently for Israel's Council of Higher Education have brought despairing news about the condition of the humanities in the country's universities. Especially dispiriting is the report on Jewish studies, once the crowning glory of Israel's flagship Hebrew University—and, in the report's inadvertently nostalgic words, "an investment in the nurturing of the deep spiritual and cultural structures of Israeli public and private life." That investment has been producing ever smaller returns.
Zionism Derangement Syndrome Zionism Derangement Syndrome
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A smoldering resentment, bordering on political paranoia, is palpable in sectors of Israel's Left these days. Everywhere, it seems, powerful enemies are conspiring to undermine the centers of cultural influence that leftists have long regarded as their own property, and as beyond criticism. Their response bears a resemblance to the left-wing American affliction that the columnist Charles Krauthammer memorably labeled "Bush Derangement Syndrome."
Tablets Tablets
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A few days ago, Apple released yet another new device aimed at integrating words written, spoken, and seen, and freeing them from the limitations of time and space. It joins an array of other products making texts and audio-video materials available as never before. Is anything being lost here? The Talmud declares: "Written words should not be spoken, and spoken words should not be written." What the rabbis specifically sought to impress on Jewish minds was the difference between the Written Torah, fixed, immutable, divine, and the constantly accreting commentaries known as the Oral Torah, spontaneous, dynamic, human yet also somehow partaking of...
Let My People In Let My People In
Thursday, 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....
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Editors' Picks
Why Study Talmud? Richard Hidary, Shofar. An important question, to which a collection of entertaining personal testimonies by contemporary talmudists repeatedly yields a common answer: for the joy of it.
The Peoplehood Fallacy David Breakstone, eJewish Philanthropy. What the new communal emphasis on Jewish peoplehood misses: yes, Jews are a people—but only by virtue of their connectedness to the Jewish faith and to the land of Israel.
Anti-Semitism and the American University Walter Reich, Jerusalem Post. Many faculty members are themselves too discomfited by Israel to be comfortable examining the explosion of anti-Semitism, much of it aimed at that country.
Cantors and Levites Jonathan L. Friedmann, Daily Rabbi. Five years of formal schooling may seem like a lot, but as with the Levites in the ancient Temple, the musical and Jewish training of today's cantors is a lifetime's affair.
Going Local Sue Fishkoff, JTA. With national Jewish population studies becoming a thing of the past, American Jewish communities are investing in surveying their own.
Fallout from YIISA Ron Rosenbaum, Slate. Thanks in part to complicity by Jewish faculty in Yale's shameful decision, the frank discussion of anti-Semitism is becoming verboten on American campuses. See also: Why are Liberals Silent?
On Torah and Judaism James L. Kugel, YouTube. Interviewed in Moscow, the eminent scholar talks about his life, his career, and the tension between what he does as a student of the Bible and how he lives as a Jew. (Video)
Russia's Jewish Spring Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post. The opening of a Jewish-studies department at St. Petersburg State University marks a quiet triumph for Jewish academic, cultural, and religious life in Russia.
Up with Electronic Scholarship Seth Kadish, Rationalist Judaism. Should scholars of Judaica publish their work on the Internet instead of between covers? Only if they want people to read it.
Reading the Holocaust D.G. Myers, Commonplace Blog. An ordered guide to what is essential in the vast corpus of Holocaust literature.