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History


Independence Day Independence Day
Thursday, April 26, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Every spring, within a single week, Israel commemorates Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, and Yom Ha'atzma'ut. These days revisit the core drama of the modern Jewish experience.  They are also among the most controversial in the Israeli calendar.
The First Lady of Fleet Street The First Lady of Fleet Street
Monday, April 23, 2012 by Susan Hertog | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Her story is as old as Eve—lust for knowledge and power, disillusion, tragedy and rebirth—and as new as the modern world's technologically based global empires. It begins in the ghettos of Frankfurt and the cities of ancient Babylonia and ends in the mansions of Mayfair and country estates of England.
The Education of a “Wise Man” The Education of a “Wise Man”
Friday, April 20, 2012 by Allan Arkush | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Eddie Jacobson was once a folk hero among American Jews, and even today he is far from forgotten. In their authoritative book A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, Allis and Ronald Radosh tell how Truman's old business partner did his part to bring Israel into existence.
Righteous Among <i>Our</i> Nation Righteous Among Our Nation
Thursday, April 19, 2012 by Chaya Glasner | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Even before visitors walk through the door of Yad Vashem, they see a powerful tribute to Holocaust heroism. Along the Avenue of the Righteous leading to the museum, thousands of trees bloom in honor of the approximately 21,000 "Righteous Among the Nations," courageous Gentiles who defied the Nazis and risked their lives to save Jews from deportation.
A Real Titanic Love Story A Real Titanic Love Story
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 by Philip Getz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

One hundred years ago today, the RMS Carpathia pulled into New York's Pier 54 carrying 705 survivors of the Titanic disaster. Most of the survivors were women and children from first class. But Ida Straus, one of the wealthiest and possibly one of the oldest women on board, was not among them.
Getting Hitler Getting Hitler
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Some cataclysmic events occur with the speed of a train wreck; others unfold over months or even years. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 bestseller The Black Swan argues that the more earth-shattering the event, the less likely that the press will provide an early warning.
Poison Pen Poison Pen
Monday, April 16, 2012 by D.G. Myers | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A Nobel Prize-winning German novelist—a former SS soldier, no less—accuses the state of Israel of seeking to exterminate an entire people, and the literary republic yawns. But when Israel bars its accuser from entering the country, because ex-Nazis have no place in the Jewish state, the cries of "bullying" and "censorship" nearly drown out the original accusation.
Not Everything is Illuminated Not Everything is Illuminated
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 by Ben Greenfield | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Judaism is famously infatuated with text; and the New American Haggadah, with contemporary authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander listed as editor and translator, respectively, is the latest in a long line of love letters by Jews to their object of adoration.
Were the Israelites Enslaved in Egypt? Were the Israelites Enslaved in Egypt?
Friday, April 6, 2012 by Michael Carasik | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Did the exodus really take place? To many, this will seem like an absurd question. The book of Exodus has a dozen chapters explaining that it did. Yet recent decades have found at least some biblical scholars casting doubts on the historicity of this story.
Like a Player Like a Player
Thursday, April 5, 2012 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Sports fans and religious adherents often speak the same language—of allegiance and passion, drama and catharsis, belief and faith, idols and icons, shrines and cathedrals, curses and blasphemy. When these two empires intersect, it is no surprise that there is often a struggle for primacy.
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Editors' Picks
Return to Vienna Lisa Silverman, H-Net. Jews who grew up in cosmopolitan pre-war Vienna came back after the war to find themselves strangers at home. Yet Austria's capital still fascinates Jewish writers.               
Disunited Synagogue David Cesarani, New Statesman. While some at the New Statesman may still believe Jews to be a powerful enemy within, Anglo-Jewry has never agreed on anything—whether religious practice, Zionism, or the admittance of Jewish refugees.     
Johnny Cash's Christian Zionism David Brinn, Jerusalem Post. June Carter Cash "had a dream in which Johnny was preaching to the multitudes at the Sea of Galilee, and she was intent on seeing him do it for real."
Flow of History Harold Brodsky, H-Net. While the Jordan River was agriculturally useless until the modern day, it has been politically and spiritually significant for millennia.    
The Benefactors of Breslau Malgorzata Stolarska-Fronia, H-Net. A new book cataloging Jewish welfare institutions in Breslau, Germany (now Poland) shows how philanthropy was central to the cultural exchange that followed the Emancipation.
Accounting for Abbas Jonathan Schanzer, Foreign Policy. If Mahmoud Abbas has struggled to match Yasser Arafat as a popular leader, he has proven to be at least as adept as his predecessor in embezzling funds.
India's Jewish General Aimee Ginsburg, Open. Asked to name a great Jewish warrior, few Jews would point to Jack Jacob. But in his native India, the Jewish general who won the Indo-Pakistan War is a hero.
Eighteenth-Century Aliyah Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. Two hundred years before modern Zionism, Jews across the Russian empire funded Rabbi Judah Chassid and his 120 followers on their trek from Europe to a new life in the Promised Land.
Intellectual Guilt Jonathan S. Tobin, Contentions. The spate of attacks on French Jews since the Toulouse massacre flows from not just the anti-Semitism of Arab leaders but its legitimation by the European intelligentsia.
Bild-ing Zion Igal Avidan, Times of Israel. A new Frankfurt exhibition asks, why did Axel Springer, Christian publisher of the German newspaper Bild, openly take sides with the Jewish people after World War II?