What is Jewish Dance?

For readers interested in the development of folk dance and, to a lesser extent, modern dance in Israel, Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance, edited by Judith Brin Ingber, a dance scholar who has written widely on Israeli dance, is a valuable resource.

Rebel in the Bolshoi Ranks  Sue Fishkoff,  JWeekly.  "A lot of the gestures we think of as typically Jewish—an excess of emotion, the hunched-over look, the movement equivalents of Yiddishisms—Leonid Jacobson was tucking into his ballets."  SAVE

The High Priestess of Hebrew Dance  Ruth Eshel,  Haaretz.  Rooted in the land but highly experimental, Yardena Cohen's dancing gave expression to biblical themes and progressive ideas alike.  SAVE

Ohad's Alchemy  Margot Lurie,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  What's missing from the news on Israel? The fact that the country is "jumping with dance"—thanks largely to the visionary director of Batsheva Dance Company.  SAVE

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A Real Titanic Love Story

One hundred years ago today, the RMS Carpathia pulled into New York's Pier 54 carrying 705 survivors of the Titanic disaster. Most of the survivors were women and children from first class. But Ida Straus, one of the wealthiest and possibly one of the oldest women on board, was not among them.

“Where You Go, I Go.”  James Cameron,  YouTube.  The scene from the movie Titanic in which Isidor and Ida decide to die together—deleted, unfortunately, from the final cut. (Video)  SAVE

To the Lifeboats  Titanic: the Musical,  YouTube.  In the Broadway recounting of the story, Isidor and Ida's heroism makes it onto the stage. (Audio)  SAVE

Kashrut aboard the Titanic  Marshall Weiss,  JTA.  Midway in the great wave of East European Jewish immigration to America, passenger lines began serving kosher food, mainly to immigrants in steerage.  SAVE

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Reading between the Lists

As long as humans have been writing, humans have been making lists and ranking things. The new Daily Beast/Newsweek list of "America's Top 50 Rabbis for 2012" is, like most American lists, whether of rabbis, cars, or colleges, designed to shape reality as much as reflect it.

American Jews, American Judaism  Ruth R. Wisse, Jack Wertheimer,  Standpoint.  Two leading scholars meet to discuss the state of contemporary American Jewish life and the challenges to it from within and without. Is there cause for optimism?  SAVE

Haunted Houses  Allan Nadler,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The most consistent feature of synagogues in the land of the free is a chronic inchoateness marked by extreme architectural, spiritual, and liturgical malleability, and an almost endless shiftiness.  SAVE

Spirituality Lite  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The Jewish Renewal Movement is brimming with avowedly noble aspirations. Why are the movement and its writings so shallow?  SAVE

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Peter Beinart, I Quit.

Peter Beinart's new blog on the Daily Beast titled Open Zion (formerly Zion Square) is dedicated to an "open and unafraid conversation about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish future."  But after several weeks of Open Zion, one writer has concluded that its conversation is not, in fact, open—and is not one in which he can continue to take part. Here, he resigns his position. 

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Heschel ca. 1940.

Heschel in Yiddish and Hebrew

Standing at Sinai, "All the people were seeing the thunder" (Exodus 20:15), seeing the sounds. The word "revelation" would be somewhat misleading, since nothing was unveiled: The mountain was wreathed in cloud and smoke.

Change of Heart  Esti Ahronovitz,  Haaretz.  Why isn't Heschel better known in Israel? "Because here," says Dror Bondi, "another God rules."  SAVE

Prophetic Witness  Edward K. Kaplan, Samuel H. Dresner,  Yale University Press.  When Heschel made his powerful 1957 speech, he was assailed on the spot by Yitzhak Tabenkin, venerable keeper of Labor Zionism's ideological flame.  SAVE

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