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In observance of Shavuot, Jewish Ideas Daily will not publish on May 28.

Israel Studies 101

 

The modern American research university is a house of many rooms. The field of Israel Studies, which has emerged in the past decade, occupies one of the newest—and smallest—of those rooms.

Studying Israel  Jan Jaben-Eilon,  Jerusalem Post.  The growth of interest in Israel as a field of serious academic study is not just American but worldwide.  SAVE

Multicultural Israel in a Global Perspective  Association for Israel Studies.  The Association for Israel Studies, in existence since 1985, plans its 2012 conference in Haifa.  SAVE

Follow the Money  Alex Joffe,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Between 1995 and 2008, Arab Gulf states gave $234 million in contracts and about $88 million in gifts to American universities. What has their money purchased?  SAVE

Jewish Studies in Decline?  Alex Joffe,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Retiring faculty are not replaced, less research money is allocated, and fewer students enter the field. Is there a future for the academic study of Judaism?  SAVE

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The Wages of Durban

 

In the days just prior to the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) was very much in the news, and for reasons that are altogether relevant to the mass murder that took place on September 11, 2001.

Get Ready for Durban III  Jewish Ideas Daily.  That New York is about to witness the third gathering of this hate-fest shows that the attack on Israel under the banner of international law continues apace. (Videos)  SAVE

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Settling for Statehood

 

The 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly has just begun.  Unless a diplomatic miracle happens, that body will soon be asked to approve what amounts to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.  Palestinian spokesmen say they had no choice but to make their end run around serious negotiations with Israel.

Cavour and Garibaldi, 1860  Denis Mack Smith,  Cambridge University Press.  In this classic study of Garibaldi's conflicts with Cavour, the flamboyant soldier emerges as a hardheaded realist.  SAVE

The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange  Yaprak Gursoy,  East European Quarterly.  Ataturk lost control of his home town after the Greco-Turkish War.  The Greek and Turkish populations lost a good deal more.  SAVE

The 1947-48 War  BBC.  An account of the bloody results of Lord Mountbatten's line.  SAVE

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Enmity; or, Yiddish in America

 

He was irascible, neurotic, self-obsessed, and socially inept; a brilliant misfit and misanthropic dilettante. Upon his death in July 2010, Harvey Pekar's few close friends insisted that the underground comic-book writer was also a gem in the rough, an out-of-date socialist naïf.

“I’ve been aggravated . . .”  YouTube.  Harvey Pekar gained notoriety for his clownishly antagonistic appearances on NBC’s David Letterman Show.  More from a formidable Pekar video archive here and here.  SAVE

“Whadya think?”  Harvey Pekar, Tara Seibel,  Jewish Review of Books.  A comic review of R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis, in which Pekar attests to the artistic versatility of his long-time collaborator.  SAVE

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Reconstructionist rabbinical students.

Reconstructing Judaism

 

At a time when all three major Jewish denominations in America—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform—find themselves in a state of deep internal fracture, a fourth and much smaller movement, Reconstructionism, has just voted to create a unified body to coordinate the activities of its lay and rabbinical arms.

Reconstructing Halakhah  Daniel Goldman Cedarbaum,  Reconstructionism Today.  Religious law is an essential component of Jewish life, but the traditional system must be brought into line with contemporary democratic sensibilities.  SAVE

Dim-Sum Jews  Ben Weiner,  Zeek.  As a respite from the Chinese-buffet model of optional Jewishness, a young rabbi turns wistfully to the "thickness" and "dense particularity" of cultural Yiddishkeit. (PDF, 2010)  SAVE

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Insight & Analysis

1948: Palestine Betrayed  Efraim Karsh, Elliot Jager.  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Zionist Jews were not interlopers in Palestine. The creation of the Jewish state was not an "original sin" foisted upon the Arab world. The tragic flight of the Palestinian refugees was overwhelmingly not the fault of the Zionists. To the contrary, at every momentous junction the Zionists opted for compromise and peace, the Arabs for intransigence and belligerency.  This, in summary, is how most people once understood the Arab-Israel conflict. Today, however, as Israel marks its Independence Day, an entire generation has come to maturity believing a diametrically opposite "narrative" . . .  SAVE

On the Roots of Israel’s Culture Wars  Menachem Mautner.  Haaretz.  The ongoing conflict between religious and secular worldviews expresses itself in competing visions of Israel's system of law. (Interview by David Green).  SAVE

The Eternal Return  Lazar Berman, Uri Sadot.  Commentary.  The relationship between the United States and Israel is fracturing. The president is pressuring the Jewish state to make painful concessions in return for vague agreements.  Israeli leaders worry that the support of a formerly reliable constituency—American Jews—is slipping away.
The year is 1975.  SAVE

Learn Hebrew!  David Hazony.  Forward.  The cultural gulf between Israel and the Diaspora can be bridged—but only if American Jews decide they want to bridge it.  SAVE

Kirk Douglas  The Mike Wallace Interview.  "I am not even aware whether or not we have former Nazi officers in our production. Very honestly, I wouldn't even allow myself to think in those terms . . . I like to feel that the War is over." (Video; 1957).  SAVE

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.  SAVE

The End of the Land-for-Peace Era  Moshe Arens.  Haaretz.  Livni's defeat indicates that Israel may be headed back to a political system based on two major parties—both with a focus on socioeconomic issues and a sadder-but-wiser skepticism about territorial concessions.  SAVE

Voices & Arguments

Vital Signs: Torah and Service

 

Jack Wertheimer

As if from a fantastical time machine, some 300 youngsters disembark in the woods of western Pennsylvania to find themselves at the building site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In a quick briefing they are introduced to the biblical passages describing the construction project, invited to imagine the challenges confronting the ancient builders—how to move and hoist heavy loads of quarried stone, how to shape metal into giant candelabra—and then immediately drafted into the mammoth task. Only when their labors are complete, two and a half hours later, do they begin the mundane assignment of meeting their counselors and locating their bunks.

Continue Reading "Vital Signs: Torah and Service"  Jack Wertheimer,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  SAVE

SAVE "Vital Signs: Torah and Service"

Voices & Arguments

Vital Signs: Torah and Service

 

Jack Wertheimer

As if from a fantastical time machine, some 300 youngsters disembark in the woods of western Pennsylvania to find themselves at the building site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In a quick briefing they are introduced to the biblical passages describing the construction project, invited to imagine the challenges confronting the ancient builders—how to move and hoist heavy loads of quarried stone, how to shape metal into giant candelabra—and then immediately drafted into the mammoth task. Only when their labors are complete, two and a half hours later, do they begin the mundane assignment of meeting their counselors and locating their bunks.

Continue Reading "Vital Signs: Torah and Service"  Jack Wertheimer,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  SAVE

SAVE "Vital Signs: Torah and Service"

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