The Education of a "Wise Man"

Eddie Jacobson was once a folk hero among American Jews, and even today he is far from forgotten. In their authoritative book A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, Allis and Ronald Radosh tell how Truman's old business partner did his part to bring Israel into existence.

From the Policy Planning Staff . . .  George Kennan,  Foreign Relations of the United States.  U.S. interests, Kennan wrote in 1948, "will continue to be adversely affected to the extent that we continue to support partition."  SAVE

The Sources of Soviet Conduct  George Kennan,  Foreign Affairs.  Kennan's chief preoccupation in the late 1940s was not Israel but charting the path of the United States through the new Cold War.  SAVE

Hitlerland  Elliot Jager,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Kennan may have helped Jews escape from Hitler's Germany, but he wasn't above complaining about the inconvenience.  SAVE

SAVE "The Education of a "Wise Man""

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

SAVE "A Real Titanic Love Story"

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

SAVE "Not Everything is Illuminated"

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

SAVE "Like a Player"

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

SAVE "Reading between the Lists"