Imagine God not as a benign force infusing the universe with love and sustaining it with mercy, and not as a stern judge smiting sinners from on high with his cosmic zap-gun, but as a grandfatherly figure, kind but, truth be told, somewhat out of it, sitting in a corner, tolerant of the various paths his children have chosen.
The holidays are over, the coffee-table books have all been unwrapped and set aside, and winter isn't going anywhere for a while. In short, it's time to settle in for some good reading. The literary critic D. G. Myers here presents the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, all of which merit your attention.
A two-part glimpse back at some of the year's most popular Jewish Ideas Daily features that you might have missed.
Here, part I.
The holiday of Hanukkah is, in part, a celebration of the victory of traditionalist Jews over Jews bent on assimilation to Greek Seleucid culture. As such, the second-century B.C.E. Maccabean revolt has resonated throughout the ages not only as a key historical contest, but as a wellspring for interpretations of the divergent views of the Hebrews and the Greeks.
Jack Wertheimer
Fifth in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.
"I've heard the term ‘Jewish peoplehood' very often but never understood what it meant," says Zhanna Beyl, an immigrant from Moscow now living in New York, where she works with Jewish teens from the former Soviet Union. "But I got a feeling for it when a small group of us from Latin America, Poland, India, and the States spontaneously sang the same Jewish musical tunes and talked." The setting of their encounter was the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship program, a unique experiment in global Jewish conversation.
© 2011 copyright Jewish Ideas Daily. All rights reserved. Design: Point Five, NY.
