Modern Times
In the Jewish Dark ContinentTuesday, November 22, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Most American Jews descend from ancestors who resided in the Pale of Settlement, the territory from the Black Sea to the Baltic in which Jews were confined by the Czars. A new book describes one effort to chart that territory.
On the Road AgainWednesday, November 16, 2011 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The chronically tense relations between the Israeli government and Bedouins in the Negev—where unrecognized villages are built, razed, and built again—are certain to grow even more tense with the Israeli Cabinet's recent approval of a plan that will recognize about half these villages but demolish the other half.
The Holy Land of EnglandThursday, November 10, 2011 by Liam Hoare | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The King James Bible, along with the Book of Common Prayer, Shakespeare, and Milton, transformed the English language, introducing a vibrant lexicon that is used to this day. It also fused biblical mythology with concepts of English national identity.
Among the TruthersWednesday, November 9, 2011 by James Kirchick | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Do we live in the age of conspiracy? In April, after repeated prodding by then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump, Barack Obama felt compelled to release his "long form" birth certificate to dispel rumors that that he was not a natural-born U.S. citizen.
To Be Young, Gifted, and a British JewMonday, November 7, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
One way to think of British Jewry is to focus on its slow and steady decline: 270,000 souls, demographically graying; synagogue affiliation on a downward spiral; out-marriage running at between 30-50 percent.
British Philo-Semitism, Once and FutureThursday, November 3, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with public discourse about Jews in today's United Kingdom can be forgiven for viewing the term "British philo-Semitism" as an oxymoron.
Creating the Master RaceFriday, October 28, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan's peaceful Battery Park is an unlikely place to explore some of the 20th century's most horrific evils. Deadly Medicine, an exhibit on Nazi racial science, is a sobering examination of the intertwined history of science and evil.
Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Hating JewTuesday, October 25, 2011 by Dan Kagan-Kans | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The French author Irène Némirovsky lived through one world war and died at Hitler's hands in the second. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Kiev at the turn of the last century, she came of age just in time to flee revolutionary Russia for Paris.
In Egypt, with LiberalsWednesday, October 19, 2011 by Michael J. Totten | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
American relations with the Arab world have been strained for decades; Israel's relations with the Arab world barely exist. But the Arab world itself is not all of a piece. The outright enemies of Israel and the West—preeminently, Syria and Iran—are political totalitarians.
Political ContrailTuesday, October 11, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
This month marks the 30th anniversary of an emotionally fraught and bitterly waged political confrontation between the Reagan administration and the organized Jewish community.
Editors' Picks
Mortimer Adler The Mike Wallace Interview. "The kind of capitalism I'm talking about is, I would think, even more revolutionary than Communism." (Video; 1958)
George Jessel The Mike Wallace Interview. On the rumor that the comedian might be appointed ambassador to Israel: "I think if they did, I'd make a very good ambassador." (Video; 1957)
Abba Eban The Mike Wallace Interview. Arnold Toynbee, says Eban, "takes the massacre of millions of our men, women and children" and "compares it to the plight of Arab refugees alive, on their kindred soil, suffering certain anguish, but of course possessed of the supreme gift of life. This equation . . . is, I think, a distortion of any historic perspective." (Video; 1958)
Arab Fairy Tales Lyn Julius, Times of Israel. In countries that ethnically cleansed their Jews, the media now hail the restoration of Jewish buildings as somehow indicative of pluralism and tolerance.
Theater of the Absurd Danny Ayalon, Foreign Policy. The world's worst human rights offenders have hijacked the UN Human Rights Council, and Israel isn't going to put up with it any more.
Will Churches Boycott Israel? Giulio Meotti, Ynet. The five biggest mainline Protestant denominations in the United States have all debated or adopted policies intended to divest from or boycott Israel. And much will be decided in the next few months.
How the Left Turned against the Jews Nick Cohen, Standpoint. As Communism gave way to anti-colonialism, Israel remained a target for special rage on the Left, even though Zionism was both a settler movement and an anti-colonial movement.
A Vast Right-Wing Jewish Conspiracy? Rafael Medoff, Jerusalem Post. Hearing a prominent Jewish historian claim that criticism of FDR's inaction during the Holocaust is the handiwork of disgruntled Likudniks, a leftist blogger took it upon himself to prove her wrong.
The Book That Drove Them Crazy Andrew Ferguson, Weekly Standard. Twenty-five years ago, a studious manuscript called Souls Without Longing was given a more commercial title and a print run of 10,000 copies. It soon was selling 25,000 copies a week, and its author was the most famous professor in the Western world.
After Grant Expelled the Jews Lawrence Grossman, Forward. We'll probably never know how much of Grant's change-of-course was sincere and how much politically expedient. But he was not the last president "good for the Jews" to hold paradoxically prejudiced views about them.