A Very English Institution

 

Last week some 600 Jews converged on the hamlet of Kerhonkson in upstate New York for Limmud NY, a three-day "marketplace of Jewish ideas." Now in its eighth year, the volunteer-run Limmud NY is open to professional teachers and amateurs alike.

Talking Heads  Nathan Lopes Cardozo,  Cardozo Academy.  Is wearing a kippah all the time equivalent to not wearing it at all? Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo tells Limmud how his kippah has come between him and God.  SAVE

Renaissance in Russia  Alex Weisler,  JTA.  The idea of bringing Limmud to the former Soviet Union was dismissed as ridiculous. But now, with a network from Odessa to Beersheba, it is rejuvenating the Russian-speaking Jewish community.  SAVE

Unity in Adversity  Ofra Bengio,  Haaretz.  Deteriorating Israeli-Turkish relations have caught Turkish Jews in the crossfire. Yet Limmud Istanbul testifies to a community as resolute and vibrant as ever.  SAVE

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Human Rights and Religious Wrongs

 

Although the discourse on human rights has a long pedigree, traceable at least to early modern natural rights theory and politics, the philosophical case for human rights against one alternative, religion, has yet to be made.

No Human Rights for Jews?  Elena Bonner,  Sakharov Center.  Speaking in May 2009 to the Freedom Forum in Oslo, the late Elena Bonner denounced the blatant anti-Semitism of her fellow human-rights activists.  SAVE

Human Rights Watch vs. Israel: An Inside Story  Ben Birnbaum,  New Republic.  A tale of bias and bigotry in the human-rights organization that is a major force in international politics.  SAVE

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People of the Byte

 

Jews have long been the People of the Book. But as computers replace books and possibly libraries, museums, and universities, will they soon be the People of the Byte?

Welcome to Judaica Europeana  European Commission,  europeana.eu.  The European Commission has launched a project aimed at creating a European digital library. Judaica Europeana is a part of the enterprise.  SAVE

Historical Jewish Press  National Library of Israel.  A collection of 19th and 20th century Jewish newspapers from America, Mandatory Palestine and Israel, France, Morocco, Poland and elsewhere—in the original layouts, and with searchable text.  SAVE

Reuniting the Dispersed Fragments  Ofer Aderet,  Haaretz.  Over a half-million fragments from the Cairo Genizah will soon be online, and computers have begun the revolutionary process of reassembling whole documents.  SAVE

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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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Insight & Analysis

History without Witnesses  Deborah E. Lipstadt.  Jewish Week.  As the Holocaust disappears from living memory, what matters is not who is speaking but who is listening.  SAVE

Bullies, Sluts, Bulimics . . . and Supreme Court Justices  Shira Kohn.  Lilith.  Given the numbers of women involved over the decades, historians won't be able to ignore the Jewish sorority experience for much longer. (PDF).  SAVE

Decoding Day School Enrollment  J.J. Goldberg.  Forward.  Despite two decades and millions of dollars spent pushing the idea, Jewish day schooling just isn't catching on among non-Orthodox American Jews.  SAVE

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.  SAVE

Geoffrey Hartman's Jewish Turn  Andrew Bush.  H-Net.  The scholar's aim is not to tear down the temple of the Western academy, but to build a third, distinctively Jewish pillar within it. Its name is midrash.  SAVE

The Mis-Education of a Young Evangelical  Dexter Van Zile.  New English Review.  How traumatic has the Jewish refusal to accept Jesus as the messiah been for Christians, and to what end?.  SAVE

Physician, Explain Thyself  Michael L. Satlow.  Talmud Blog.  How can we account for the Babylonian Talmud's medical advice, which in many cases seems to have been transmitted retrojectively?.  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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