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Children


Not-So-Young Adult Not-So-Young Adult
Thursday, April 25, 2013 by Diane Cole | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

With remarkable sensitivity and clarity, Israeli novelist Nava Semel portrays children in Mandate Palestine working as hard as they can to make sense of a post-Holocaust, pre-state limbo.
The Fool and the Assassin The Fool and the Assassin
Monday, February 18, 2013 by Dan Kagan-Kans | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Most movie stars don’t act, they play themselves.  Danny Kaye, the biggest star of all in the 1940s and 1950s, who would have been 100 last month, was different. 
Denominational Delusions Denominational Delusions
Wednesday, February 6, 2013 by Andrew Apostolou | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

With synagogues closing, congregations ageing, and the non-Orthodox majority dwindling, American Jews are caught in a crisis. Yet no one is tackling the root of this problem: intermarriage.
“Touch not Mine Anointed Ones” “Touch not Mine Anointed Ones”
Friday, December 21, 2012 by Moshe Sokolow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Contemplating what occupies God all day, the Talmud declares that “during the last set of hours, God sits and teaches Torah to children who died untimely deaths.”
The Whole Body The Whole Body
Monday, December 17, 2012 by Viva Hammer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

My rabbinic father-in-law and my lay leader mother agree on one thing: no body piercing.  Ears, nose, and bellybutton, all are sacred property on loan from God.
More Expensive by the Dozen More Expensive by the Dozen
Thursday, October 11, 2012 by Dara Horn | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A hundred years ago, industrial efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth, Jr. claimed that children were “cheaper by the dozen.”  Recently the economist Bryan Caplan made the modern version of the self-interested argument for producing more offspring.  In an exclusive feature from the current issue of the Jewish Review of Books, novelist Dara Horn elegantly begs to differ.  —The Editors
I. B. Singer’s Last Laugh I. B. Singer’s Last Laugh
Monday, August 6, 2012 by David G. Roskies | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Like millions of his fellow immigrants to America, Isaac Bashevis Singer started over. In the beginning, he was a deadly serious Polish-Yiddish writer with world-literary ambitions.
Editors' Picks
Count Your Blessings William Kolbrener, Open Minded Torah. Halakhah says that the blessing recited upon the birth of a child with Down Syndrome is the same as the blessing upon a death.  A 17-year-old girl may know better.