Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism and Man at YaleTuesday, May 21, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Continuing our retrospective, we revisit Alex Joffe's critique of the unwillingness of Western universities to confront contemporary anti-Semitism, first published June 13, 2011.
Menachem Begin: A New LifeFriday, May 3, 2013 by Asaf Romirowsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Ensuring that another Holocaust would never take place was Menachem Begin's paramount concern, even when he was Prime Minister of Israel, pursuing Yasir Arafat in his Beirut bunker.
“They All Could Have Been Saved”Thursday, May 2, 2013 by Lance J. Sussman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus personally rescued 50 Jewish children from Nazi-era Vienna and brought them home to Philadelphia. A new documentary tells their story—and contrasts it with the apathy shown by their community.
The Politics of YiddishMonday, April 29, 2013 by Ruth Wisse | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Jews who hold on to, or reach back for, the Yiddishkeyt of Yiddish yearn not merely for a declining language but for the social and political ideal that seems embedded in it.
Zionism Before HerzlMonday, April 22, 2013 by Erika Dreifus | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In 1876, 21 years before Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, a non-Jewish woman, writing for an English audience, published a novel with a powerful Zionist message. She went by the name of George Eliot.
The Betrayal of Salonika’s JewsThursday, April 18, 2013 by Andrew Apostolou | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When the Germans entered Salonika on April 6, 1941, they found a willing cadre of collaborators and a broad section of Greek Christian opinion hostile to the Jews.
The New Rosh HashanahWednesday, April 17, 2013 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The Jewish New Year is characterized by an uneasy combination of stock-taking and solemn celebration. Yom Ha’atzma’ut, as the birthday of the Jewish state, is beginning to acquire a similar character.
Eizenstat on the Jewish FutureFriday, March 15, 2013 by Jerome A. Chanes | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In his new book on the Jewish future, Jewish diplomat Stuart Eizenstat sees Jewish destiny evolving in the friendly competition between the sovereignty of Israel and the pluralism of America.
When Liberal Protestants Were ZionistsTuesday, March 5, 2013 by Judah Bellin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
It is hard to imagine a liberal Christian theologian passionately defending Zionism today. But Reinhold Niebuhr praised Zionism as a means to the establishment of "highest civilization."
Who’s Sadat? Or, Defining Israel Literacy UpwardMonday, March 4, 2013 by David B. Starr | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
American Jewry is becoming less and less well informed about Zionism and Israel. Can anything be done to reverse this decline?
Editors' Picks
“Hitler's Reign of Terror” Emily Greenhouse, New Yorker. A 1934 documentary of Nazi oppression might have galvanized America against Hitler; but under pressure from Germany, the film was banned.
Ghosts of Scandals Past Rafael Medoff, JNS. Seventy years ago, FDR used the IRS to target a group lobbying for the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany; but Roosevelt's investigators ended up as sympathizers.
Boycotting the Boycott Charlie Laderman, Standpoint. Instead of "respecting” the boycott, Spanish novelist Antonio Munoz Molina accepted the Jerusalem prize saying, "there is in Israel a society that is alive, democratic, pluralistic and open, in which I can recognize myself as a citizen."
Nabokov's Jews Benjamin Ivry, Forward. A sympathetic portrayer of Jews in his fiction, Vladimir Nabokov denounced anti-Semitism as "philistinism in all its phases" in both Russia and the United States.
Beyond Emancipation Robert Fine, Fathom. "Mendelssohn insisted that the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment of the 18th century, was about the education and advancement of Jews, not about saving humanity from their allegedly noxious influence."
Whitewashing White Supremacy Ben Cohen, Contentions. Delegates at the World Jewish Congress expected Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, to commit to eliminating anti-Semitism from public life. They were disappointed.
The Pleasures of Anti-Semitism Eve Garrard, Fathom. "You can’t miss the relish with which some people compare Jews to the Nazis, or the fake sorrow with which they bemoan the supposed fact that Jews have brought hatred on themselves."
Hungary's New Nazism Colin Freeman, Telegraph. Instead of convening in Jerusalem, the World Jewish Congress takes place this week in Budapest to highlight mounting anti-Semitism in Hungary—which is steadily becoming institutionalized.
Rehabilitating Fagin Charles Drazin, Jewish Chronicle. Charles Dickens regretted having associated Fagin's malice so closely with his being Jewish—which has forced modern adaptations to recast the Oliver Twist villain as a loveable rogue.
Unmasking Anti-Semitism Nathan Lopes Cardozo, Jerusalem Post. "It is not because they are 'good Christians' that the Europeans are instinctively anti-Semites," wrote Zionist leader Harry Sacher. "It is because they are bad Christians, in reality repressed pagans."