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Anti-Semitism


Finally, a Palestinian “Peace Now”? Finally, a Palestinian “Peace Now”?
Monday, November 14, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

What if a group of youthful Palestinian activists, fed up with Hamas and Fatah for leading the Palestinian Arabs over and over down bloody, self-defeating dead ends, were to emerge as a new political and social force—something like a Palestinian "Peace Now"?
To Be Young, Gifted, and a British Jew To Be Young, Gifted, and a British Jew
Monday, November 7, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

One way to think of British Jewry is to focus on its slow and steady decline: 270,000 souls, demographically graying; synagogue affiliation on a downward spiral; out-marriage running at between 30-50 percent.
Creating the Master Race Creating the Master Race
Friday, October 28, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan's peaceful Battery Park is an unlikely place to explore some of the 20th century's most horrific evils.  Deadly Medicine, an exhibit on Nazi racial science, is a sobering examination of the intertwined history of science and evil.
The Yiddish Silver Screen The Yiddish Silver Screen
Thursday, October 27, 2011 by Nahma Sandrow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Nobody is sure exactly how many movies were ever made in Yiddish. James Hoberman's exhaustive study Bridge of Light (2010) lists some hundred such films, made in the 20th century primarily in America, Germany, Austria, Romania, Poland, and Russia.
Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Hating Jew Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Hating Jew
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 by Dan Kagan-Kans | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The French author Irène Némirovsky lived through one world war and died at Hitler's hands in the second. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Kiev at the turn of the last century, she came of age just in time to flee revolutionary Russia for Paris.
Are Young Rabbis Turning on Israel? Are Young Rabbis Turning on Israel?
Monday, October 24, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

For all the theological, ritualistic, and institutional differences separating the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements, what distinguishes the groups in the minds of many ordinary American Jews comes down to branding.
In Egypt, with Liberals In Egypt, with Liberals
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 by Michael J. Totten | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

American relations with the Arab world have been strained for decades; Israel's relations with the Arab world barely exist. But the Arab world itself is not all of a piece. The outright enemies of Israel and the West—preeminently, Syria and Iran—are political totalitarians.
Political Contrail Political Contrail
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

This month marks the 30th anniversary of an emotionally fraught and bitterly waged political confrontation between the Reagan administration and the organized Jewish community.
All These Vows All These Vows
Friday, October 7, 2011 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

No one knows for sure how Kol Nidrei originated. It is by far the best-known Yom Kippur prayer, but in fact it is neither a prayer nor actually recited on Yom Kippur. Rabbis have never liked it.
Israel Studies 101 Israel Studies 101
Monday, October 3, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The modern American research university is a house of many rooms. The field of Israel Studies, which has emerged in the past decade, occupies one of the newest—and smallest—of those rooms.
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Editors' Picks
Jewish Studies without Jews Geoff Vasil, DefendingHistory.com. The Lithuanian government lavishes funding on museums dedicated to commemorating the country's extinct Jewish culture.  The problem is that Lithuania's Jewish culture is still alive.
A Future for Jews in Europe? Jonathan Sacks, Huffington Post. “I gave the shortest speech of my life. It took less than a minute, and after it there was a shocked silence . . . Angela Merkel asked, ‘What would you like me to do, Chief Rabbi?’”
From Dogma to Dissent Benjamin Ivry, Forward. Vasily Grossman is now lauded as a dissident writer who dared to speak out against the USSR and reveal Stalin’s oppression of Jews. But he started out as a willing Soviet apologist.
Howard Jacobson Makes Havdalah Adam Kirsch, Jewish Review of Books. "Keep the meat from the milk, keep the holy from the profane, keep the living from the dead. And the goyim from the Jews? As an incorrigible mixer, with the bruises to show for it, I am still thinking about that."
Pius the Pious? , Washington Post. Under pressure from the Vatican, Yad Vashem now presents Pope Pius XII’s silence during the Holocaust as an attempt to protect the Church—and, by extension, the Jews.  
Après Merah, le Déluge Guy Millière, Gatestone Institute. Despite France’s focus on its Jews in the wake of the Toulouse killings, anti-Semitic attacks have only intensified—and the media, the government, and the police are all turning a blind eye.
Soviet Spring Claire Berlinski, Tablet. A new book claims that Soviet interference in the Middle East has had far greater impact than is generally acknowledged—stretching to the current collapse of its former client states.
Confessions of a Narcissist David Rieff, Nation. Claude Lanzmann's memoir is a self-indulgent failure.  But Shoah is a work of genius, and that does indeed justify a life.    
Public Enemy Michael C. Moynihan, Tablet. An admirer of Qaddafi and Mugabe and an old-school anti-Semite, Charles Barron is an unlikely choice for a New York congressman. But low turnout in the Democratic primary could make him just that.
The Student of Sadism Daily Telegraph. Although many balked at her rejection of the notion of evil, Gitta Sereny's openness with the Nazi war criminals she interviewed led them to tell her things that they would never tell anyone else.