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Enlightenment


Enigmas of Modern Jewish Identity Enigmas of Modern Jewish Identity
Tuesday, April 9, 2013 by Stephen J. Whitfield | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Over the course of a lifetime facing modernity's conflicting demands, how might Jewishness affect the struggle to sustain identity, and how might this struggle mark the contours of Diaspora history?
Back When the Jews Built Like Jews Back When the Jews Built Like Jews
Thursday, March 21, 2013 by Ben Greenfield | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In December 1872, authorities in Florence halted elaborate plans for a grand synagogue and criticized the city's Jews—for not building more Jewishly.
Antisemitism: Obsession or Logic? Antisemitism: Obsession or Logic?
Thursday, January 24, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Robert Wistrich’s new book, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel, does much to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was and is a fixture of the Left—but stops short of that conclusion.
A Pillar with a Past A Pillar with a Past
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Gil S. Perl’s The Pillar of Volozhin sheds light on the Netziv, one of Lithuanian Jewry's greatest leaders, whose own intellectual development is reflected throughout the yeshiva world today.
The Turning of the Torah Tide The Turning of the Torah Tide
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

“Torah Judaism today retains more of its youth than at any time since the Haskalah.”  Historian Marc Shapiro recently made this remark.  Can he possibly be correct?
Reform of Tradition, Tradition of Reform Reform of Tradition, Tradition of Reform
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 by Moshe Sokolow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Max Lilienthal’s life provides a lens through which we watch American Judaism, Reform Judaism in particular, struggle with the consequences of its own idiosyncratic condition.
Yeshiva Revolution Yeshiva Revolution
Friday, September 7, 2012 by Yoel Finkelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Shaul Stampfer, one of Israel's foremost experts on Eastern European Jewry, is the most unlikely of iconoclasts.  A thin, quiet, unassuming man, he gives the impression that he would have been happy as a simple melamed (elementary school teacher) in the shtetls he describes.
Moravian Morals for Montreal Moravian Morals for Montreal
Friday, August 31, 2012 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

When Montreal police entered the home of Amir Khadir, a member of Quebec’s parliament, they found a curiously revealing objet d’art: a parody of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, with Khadir, in the position of Lady Liberty, standing triumphantly over the corpse of Quebec premier Jean Charest.
Out of the Well of the Past Out of the Well of the Past
Monday, August 2, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Jewish history was once regularly portrayed as a march from pre-modern stasis to modern revolution and change. This picture held its attractions, offering clearly marked battle lines for later proponents on either side of the ongoing ideological struggles between traditionalists and modernizers. By now, however, we have been well instructed in the deceptive simplicity of all such efforts to impress order on the relentless flux of history, which so often dissolves the closer we look at it.
Editors' Picks
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."
Divided by Faith David J. Davis, Imaginative Conservative. “Where modern tolerance does not permit any rival to the authority of rationalism and secular humanism, pre-Enlightenment Europe was establishing policies that permitted worldviews which its rulers saw as heretical.”
Reason, Revelation, and Revolution Patrick Allitt, Claremont Review of Books. America's founders have been characterized both as devout Christians and as militant secularists.  A new book argues that they remained believers in God, but revolted against the Bible.
The Godless Delusion Neilson MacKay, New Criterion. By "making a 'god out of man,'" artists like Schoenberg, Goethe, and Matisse thought that "in the wake of religious disbelief, art could give us meaning again."
Defending the Faith Allan Nadler, Forward. The Great Partnership, Jonathan Sacks' new book on the relationship between science and religion, is a moving expression of his own faith.  But does it lack intellectual honesty?
Mendelssohn Revisited Benjamin Pollock, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. If Moses Mendelssohn is regarded as a significant Enlightenment figure (but not a serious philosopher), then we aren't giving Mendelssohn the credit he deserves.