Sephardim
Secularism and Its DiscontentsThursday, May 30, 2013 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In an essay first published December 17, 2010, Yehudah Mirsky examines a defense of Jewish secularism and finds it—and Jewish secularism itself—wanting.
The Betrayal of Salonika’s JewsThursday, April 18, 2013 by Andrew Apostolou | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When the Germans entered Salonika on April 6, 1941, they found a willing cadre of collaborators and a broad section of Greek Christian opinion hostile to the Jews.
The OutliersFriday, March 29, 2013 by Allan Arkush | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Bukharan Jews are often viewed as a group of isolated exotics. In fact, they are not so different that there has ever been much question about their belonging to the Jewish people.
The Portuguese PhoenixTuesday, February 26, 2013 by Kevin Zdiara | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Founded to resurrect Portuguese Judaism 75 years ago, Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue in Porto remains a symbol of Jewish resilience, faith, and conviction.
Crisis in the CurriculumMonday, October 22, 2012 by Yoel Finkelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
In 1953, in a bold move, Israel passed a State Education Law. Before then, Israeli education was run by political movements and parties which used their schools not just to teach the three R's but to indoctrinate as many unsuspecting youngsters as possible.
The Egyptian Jewish Remnant, Against IsraelWednesday, October 3, 2012 by Joseph Mayton | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
CAIRO: At this upscale Cairo café, Sam and Amira, brother and sister, are the last two who would be seen as Jewish.
The Last Berber JewsFriday, August 10, 2012 by Diana Muir Appelbaum | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
As a child, the French filmmaker Kamal Hachkar learned the Berber language from his grandparents in Tinghir, a Berber oasis city east of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. As an adult he discovered that the now exclusively Muslim town once had a substantial Jewish community.
The First Lady of Fleet StreetMonday, 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.
Editors' Picks
The Storyteller’s Gift Robert Pinsky, New York Times. Retrospective, the new novel by Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua, “undertakes to conjure nothing less than the enigmatic, irresistible majesty of the past that governs human action.”
Torah from Sinai? Marc B. Shapiro, Seforim. Today, Mosaic authorship of the Torah is an Orthodox principle of faith. But, "in medieval Ashkenaz, it was not regarded as heretical to posit post-Mosaic additions."
Jews Crossing Fred MacDowell, On the Main Line. A 17th-century Sephardic prayer book contains instructions for making "a Jewish sign of the cross" to ward off fear. Was it intended to wean Conversos off Christian ritual?
The Silent Yeshiva Deborah Fineblum Raub, JNS. Ma’aseh Nissim, Israel’s first yeshiva for the deaf, has not only tailored Talmud study to the needs of students who cannot hear, but also brought sign language into the ultra-Orthodox world.
The Secret Jews of Terceira Judith Fein, San Diego Jewish Journal. "In all my travels, I had never seen anything like this. I had beheld hidden arks and sequestered shelves that held objects of worship, but an entire synagogue?"
From Jews to Catholics—and Back Juan Forero, Washington Post. Dozens of evangelical Catholic families in northern Colombia have discovered their Jewish ancestry—and converted to Judaism. Their former minister says, “It was like our souls had memory.”
The Myth of Sepharad Teresa Calders, Esperança Valls, Catalan International View. Although Jews of Iberian origin are now referred to as Sephardi, the Jews of the Kingdom of Aragon shared neither language nor liturgy with their brethren in Castile and Andalusia.
Crypto-Jews vs. the Catholic Church Paul Foer, Chananette Pascal Cohen, JNS. As Hispanic Crypto-Jews rediscover their spiritual heritage, many have also discovered the material heritage stolen from them—and could sue the Catholic Church to get it back.
Likud: the New Labor? Avi Shushan, Ynet. Likud once distinguished itself from Labor by paying some attention to Sephardic Jews. But to judge by the current candidates, “today’s Likud is identical to the party it once loathed.”
Beer with a Back Story Editors, Jewish Ideas Daily. What happens when Israel’s emerging boutique beer culture intersects with the American trend toward getting to know the food one eats? Lost Tribes Brew happens. The New York-based microbrewery produces beers based on recipes gathered from various remote communities claiming Israelite origins, like India’s Bene Menashe and Ethiopia’s Beta Israel.No doubt, part of this is a gimmick: in order to successfully market an odd-tasting beer brewed by a bunch of Jewish twenty-somethings in upstate New York, you need to have a good story, like one that connects your customer to real or imagined ancient Israelite foodways (note that...