Going the Distance

Israel is a nation-state. In contrast, Diaspora Jewry—in particular, American Jewry—is a network of voluntary communities, constituting not just different structures but different life-worlds. While it is usually taken for granted that nation-states and their respective diasporas will grow apart, with Jews the issue is hotly debated.

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Not Everything is Illuminated

Judaism is famously infatuated with text; and the New American Haggadah, with contemporary authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander listed as editor and translator, respectively, is the latest in a long line of love letters by Jews to their object of adoration.

Illuminated Manuscripts, Hebrew  Jewish Virtual Library.  It may well be that such manuscripts stretch back to the Hellenist period; and in every period, not just the text but the surrounding artistic climate is illuminated.  SAVE

Birds' Head Haggadah Revealed  Richard McBee,  Jewish Press.  The third century C.E. saw the first great period of Jewish visual creativity. Six hundred years later a second flowering occurred.  SAVE

The Hamburg Haggadah  New York Public Library.  A digital version of each of the Haggadah's elaborately illustrated pages.  SAVE

The Golden Haggadah  British Library.  An online presentation of some of the Golden Haggadah's stunning color images.  SAVE

Feast Your Eyes  Jewish Ideas Daily.  A collection now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem features the only known Hebrew illuminated manuscript produced by a woman, a 19th-century Haggadah.  SAVE

Birds’ Heads and Frog’s Buttocks  Marc Michael Epstein,  Jewish Review of Books.  Illuminated Jewish manuscripts illustrated not only the literal biblical text, but midrash as well.  SAVE

Newish or Jewish?  Leon Wieseltier,  Jewish Review of Books.  There is immodesty in the notion that newness, and one's own signature, will suffice. The New American Haggadah is abundantly a labor of love, but love is not enough.  SAVE

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Like a Player

Sports fans and religious adherents often speak the same language—of allegiance and passion, drama and catharsis, belief and faith, idols and icons, shrines and cathedrals, curses and blasphemy. When these two empires intersect, it is no surprise that there is often a struggle for primacy.

Pop Jesus  Tom Breen,  Baylor University Press.  The humor writer and "Internet Theologian" reflects on portentous topics like "The Christian Coach: God's Foul-Mouthed Psycho."  SAVE

God Does Not Play Baseball  Alan Hirsch,  FrumForum.  God "needs to have her head examined if she worries about the outcome of ballgames. Isn't there enough trouble in the mid-east? Can't she get to work on the economy?"  SAVE

Ethics for Sports Fans  James Bowman,  New Criterion.  Taking issue with David Brooks: Only in the last half-century have people come to think of religion as synonymous with self-abnegation alone.  SAVE

For Branca, an Asterisk of a Different Kind  Joshua Prager,  New York Times.  Branca's ill-fated pitch may have been a rebuke to his lack of Jewish faith—but his Catholic faith sustained him after his loss.  SAVE

What Do Sports and Religion Have in Common?  Joshua Hess,  FANatic Rabbi.  The blog of an Orthodox congregational rabbi, a youth counselor—and a sports nut.  SAVE

Is Football Treyf?  Micah Stein,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  As the extent of the game's danger is now becoming fully apparent, does Jewish law still permit playing—or even watching—football?  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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