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Israel & the Near East


The Romance of Gush Etzion The Romance of Gush Etzion
Friday, September 3, 2010 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The modern return of the Jewish people to their homeland succeeded thanks to the extraordinary tenacity of pioneering individuals who, in a dangerous environment, created new communities from scratch. One such community, or rather series of communities, is the Etzion district—in Hebrew, Gush Etzion—located along the ancient mountain route between Jerusalem and Hebron. The first three communities built by Jewish settlers were completely destroyed by Arabs. The fourth still stands today.
Limited Partnership Limited Partnership
Monday, August 16, 2010 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Celebrating its Independence Day on August 15, the nation of India marked 63 years since the end of British rule in the sub-continent. In light of the two countries' more or less contemporaneous struggle for self-determination in the immediate aftermath of World War II, one might have thought that India would establish close ties with the newly born state of Israel straightaway. It did not happen.
Britain and Israel Britain and Israel
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Prime Minister Gordon Brown went to Buckingham Palace yesterday to ask Queen Elizabeth to dissolve parliament on April 12. New elections will take place on May 6. At the moment, the Conservative party under David Cameron is leading Brown's Labor party in the polls; the Liberal Democrats, headed by Nick Clegg, are in a strong third position. The sun may have set on the British Empire, but the U.K. continues to exercise considerable influence in the international arena. Britain is a major force in the European Union and a permanent member of the UN Security Council; it plays a leading role...
Orthodoxies Orthodoxies
Friday, April 2, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

"Is Modern Orthodoxy an Endangered Species?" This was the question posed at a conference yesterday in Jerusalem. Some speakers suggested that the very term "Modern Orthodoxy" doesn't fit the Israeli context or even accurately describe this slice of Jewish life. But what, indeed, is it? Like nearly all denominational labels, this one is a product of the ideological and political debates of the 19th century, as the radical options posed by modernity—including the possibilities of assimilation without conversion to Christianity and of political self-determination—scrambled traditional categories as never before. In this unprecedented situation, adherents of tradition in general and of traditional Jewish law...
The Messianic Aliyah The Messianic Aliyah
Monday, March 15, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Today marks the rededication of the Hurva (literally, "ruin") Synagogue, once the jewel in the crown of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Its history, and the debates over that history, open a window onto a fascinating chapter with powerful reverberations today. In 1700, days after arriving from Poland, a Jewish pietist purchased an abandoned plot known since the 15th century as "the Ashkenazi courtyard," hoping to build a synagogue. When his followers proved unable to keep up their payments, the Arab creditors reduced the site to rubble. In the 19th century it arose again, magnificently, thanks to the...
Words Words
Monday, March 8, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

One of the potentially deleterious effects of the digital revolution is a flattening of consciousness—or so some fear. What sort of leveling takes place as we click relentlessly through the endless web? At what point do the words—thoughtful, meaningless, moving, inane—all bleed together? How to maintain any sense of the preciousness of language itself? Several texts recently come to light manage, each in its own way, to remind us that a whole, irreplaceable world can rest in a few furtive lines found who knows where. Phrases inked on pottery discovered at an excavation in Israel have been dated to the late-11th or early-10th...
Agnon Agnon
Thursday, February 25, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In 1966 a diminutive man, a large black kippah perched on his head, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. His acceptance speech, delivered in the lilting cadences of his native Galicia, brimmed with allusions to holy texts, conjuring up an evanescent aura of piety and sacred longings.  Yet underneath that kippah, and vibrating in the spaces between the ancient Hebrew words, was one of the most cunning minds and radical pens in Jewish literary history. Born Shmuel Yosef Czazkes in the town of Buczcacz, S. Y. Agnon, who died 40 years ago today at the age of eighty-one, moved to...
A Dead Issue? A Dead Issue?
Monday, February 15, 2010 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Since the electrifying discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in the late 1940's, the scholarly consensus has been that they were produced by the Essenes, a small Second Temple-era Jewish sect known to us from Josephus. Last year, a book by Rachel Elior, Memory and Oblivion: The Secret of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Hebrew), upended this seemingly settled issue by contending that, in fact, the Essenes never existed. Elior's revolutionary thesis, argued with force and stridency, has been discussed in major mainstream publications from Israeli newspapers to Time magazine. But the controversy, and clashing assessments of her achievement as a historian, have...
Goldstone, Again and Beyond Goldstone, Again and Beyond
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The UN's Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead has taken on a life of its own. Late last week, Israel submitted its own official version of its military operations in Gaza, to which UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon is expected to respond today.  Within Israel, calls for an independent commission of inquiry have found a prominent ally in the state's outgoing attorney general. Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz, alongside his substantive criticisms of the Goldstone Report, has denounced its author as a Jewish traitor. Intentionally or not, the Report has become a powerful element in the mounting international campaign—warfare conducted as "lawfare"—to delegitimize Israel's very existence as...
Mediterranean Maimonides Mediterranean Maimonides
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Civilizations come and go. Their greatest surviving creations remain. Such is the case with the work of Maimonides (1135–1204), a towering thinker, known to Jewish tradition as "the Great Eagle," who continues to defy easy characterization. Two new biographies depart from past treatments to situate the thought of this master philosopher within the Arabic civilization of his time, and more generally in the prism of the Mediterranean world. To the late scholar Shlomo Dov Goitein, the Mediterranean was a gracious, cross-cultural society that reached its apotheosis in the person of Maimonides' son Abraham, a Jewish devotee of Sufism. To Maimonides' more recent biographers, it...
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Editors' Picks
Why China and Russia Help Iran Richard Weitz, Diplomat. Both countries have diplomatic interests in Iran's continued alienation from the West, and both have benefited economically from the reluctance of Western companies to invest in Iran.
Off the Record Jonathan S. Tobin, Contentions. The Palestinian Authority's UNESCO triumph will not only facilitate its efforts to bypass the peace process, but also its campaign to expunge the Jewish heritage of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Vorsprung durch Technik Katia Moskvitch, BBC News. Israel has more active technology start-ups than any country outside the U.S. In fact, according to one serial entrepreneur, the creation of the country itself was "a start-up on the large scale."
Tel Aviv on Two Wheels Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times. The work-in-progress bike paths through Tel Aviv require a lot of stops and starts—all the better for close-up views of the bustling, seaside metropolis.
From Haran to Hebron Moshe Gilad, Haaretz. One anthropologist is on a campaign to mark the 1,200 kilometer path traveled by the patriarch Abraham through Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Israel.
Truth from an Unlikely Source Conrad Black, National Post. The new country of South Sudan has taken its place squarely with the Jewish state and attacked the Arab-led conspiracy against Israel in international organizations.
Free Market Rabbinate Jerusalem Post. Competition for marriage registration in Israel would foster religious expression and provide a positive alternative to the Chief Rabbinate's counterproductive monopoly.
Will Israel Strike Iran? Elliot Jager, Larry Derfner, Bloggingheads.tv. Video debate on the likelihood of an attack, media reporting on the issue, and the international implications all around.
Fraternité Ronen Bergman, Ynet. Despite Sarkozy's recent faux pas, Israel has a friend in Paris, and it would be a pity to let interpersonal rifts overshadow France's staunch support where it really matters.
Beyond Bad Faith Shelby Steele, Hudson New York. Palestinians will never be reached by reason until they are able to get beyond the paralyzing "poetic truth" that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.