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Leading Figures


Agitprop in America Agitprop in America
Thursday, May 12, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The tempest has subsided, and the playwright Tony Kushner will receive his honorary doctorate from the City University of New York after all. After a single trustee convinced the majority of his fellow board members to deny the award on the basis of Kushner's viciously negative pronouncements about Israel, the weight of almost the entire New York cultural apparatus was brought to bear.
Beyond “Religious” and “Secular” Beyond “Religious” and “Secular”
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

What should be the place of the Jewish religion in a Jewish state? There are many putative answers to this question, and the answers have changed over time. When Zionism was still an aspiration, a great blank yet to be filled in, the terms of debate were set by a self-confidently secular dispensation preoccupied with state- and institution-building. In the first few decades of statehood, religion, though state-established, was clearly subservient.
Israel: The Miracle Israel: The Miracle
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 by Paul Johnson | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The state of Israel is the product of more than 4,000 years of Jewish history. "If you want to understand our country, read this!" said David Ben-Gurion on the first occasion I met him, in 1957. And he slapped the Bible. But the creation and survival of Israel are also very much a 20th-century phenomenon.
Anti-Semitism 101 Anti-Semitism 101
Friday, May 6, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

One of the many dismaying things about anti-Semitism is its lack of originality. The rhetoric and setting change, but the substance persists. Anti-Semitism on American campuses is no exception; but the mere fact that it exists, and that it is virulent, is sufficient to merit the alarm it has caused.
Hamas-Fatah: Looking for the Red Lines Hamas-Fatah: Looking for the Red Lines
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Things can always get worse, and in the Middle East they usually will. That was made depressingly clear once again with the April 27 announcement in Cairo of a reconciliation agreement between the rival Palestinian organizations of Fatah and Hamas.
How the Likud Came to Be How the Likud Came to Be
Friday, April 22, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Benjamin Netanyahu no doubt took comfort from a recent survey showing that 76 percent of Likud members opposed annexing all of Judea and Samaria. Yet he would also have known that 10,000 party recruits had been newly signed up by uncompromising settler leaders. How to keep the Likud ("Union") together and in the center of Israel's political mainstream?
A New Germany? A New Germany?
Thursday, April 14, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

At a joint press conference in Berlin on April 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the atmosphere of mutual trust and friendship in which their just-concluded talks had taken place. Germany, he averred, was "a great friend" of Israel. Yet any sober assessment of the Germany-Israel relationship would have to come to a different conclusion.  
Messianic Temptations Messianic Temptations
Thursday, April 7, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The downfall of Moshe Katsav, the former president of Israel recently convicted and sentenced on a rape charge, is a many-sided episode—involving his crimes, the media circus around the judicial proceedings against him, and the private and public meanings of his disgrace.
“The Sickening Question”: God, Cancer, and Us “The Sickening Question”: God, Cancer, and Us
Monday, April 4, 2011 by Eve Levavi Feinstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Many scholars of the Bible and ancient Judaism prefer to focus exclusively on ancient texts and the world that produced them, refraining from engaging with the implications of their work for contemporary religious life. James L. Kugel has never been one of those scholars.
Jewish Studies in Decline? Jewish Studies in Decline?
Monday, March 28, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Reports prepared recently for Israel's Council of Higher Education have brought despairing news about the condition of the humanities in the country's universities. Especially dispiriting is the report on Jewish studies, once the crowning glory of Israel's flagship Hebrew University—and, in the report's inadvertently nostalgic words, "an investment in the nurturing of the deep spiritual and cultural structures of Israeli public and private life." That investment has been producing ever smaller returns.
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Editors' Picks
Inside Batsheva Deborah Friedes Galili, Dance Magazine. His dancers are known for fiercely expressive, electrifying performances.  But what's it really like to be a part of Ohad Naharin's choreographic alchemy?    
Building Bridges Noam Dvir, Haaretz. Moshe Safdie, the world-renowned Israeli architect, is shutting down the office he opened in Jerusalem in 1970. The future, it seems, is in China.
Reading the Netanyahu Tea Leaves Zvika Krieger, Atlantic. Does the collapse of recent Israeli-Palestinian exploratory talks mask an increased flexibility in the Prime Minister's position on Israeli control of the Jordan Valley? The Atlantic is hopeful.
How Many Came Out of Egypt? Shlomo Karni, Torah Musings. David Ben-Gurion did the math.
The Seed of Israel David Ellenson, Jewish Review of Books. He has been accused of heresy and expelled from Shas, but Haim Amsalem's lenient approach to conversion in Israel may yet be a blueprint for a more unified nation.
Talking Security, Thinking Demographics Yoram Rabin, Haaretz. Israel's Supreme Court is discussing the security implications of immigration law without explicitly addressing the demographic implications. That will have to change.
Channel 10 Facing Chapter 11 Ethan Bronner, New York Times. The troubles of the Israeli TV station are being cast as part of a broader cultural and political war for control over the judiciary, the reporting of news, and public discourse.
Unfit to Print Ron Dermer, Jerusalem Post. Netanyahu's senior adviser explains why the Prime Minister "respectfully declined" to write for the New York Times: "We wouldn't want to be seen as "Bibiwashing" the op-ed page."
Digging that Hole Efraim Karsh, Hudson New York. Attempting to defend his political science department against charges of bias, one professor betrayed the true depth of the problem by likening Israel to Nazi Germany in several key respects.
The Truth Game Efraim Karsh, Hudson New York. The discovery of a key historical document lays to rest one of the longest running debates on the 1948 war. So why has Haaretz tried to distort its contents and suppress it?