Whither the Alawites

 

Time does not appear to be on the side of Syria's minority Alawite-led regime. President Bashar Assad has reportedly been offered asylum in Moscow, which wants an orderly transition that will preserve Russian strategic interests. Other stories have Assad and his loyalists preparing mountain strongholds for a last-ditch stand.

Arab Majorities, Arab Minorities  Zvi Mazel,  Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.  The well-being of minorities and group reconciliation are not high on the agenda anywhere in the Arab world.  SAVE

Just a Matter of Time  Amos Harel,  Haaretz.  Israeli experts give the Syrian regime a slim-to-none chance of survival.  SAVE

The Alawites and Israel  John Myhill,  BESA Center.  If Israel thinks the Assads are warlike, just wait until it sees their successors.  SAVE

A Tale of Two Villages  Nir Rosen,  Al Jazeera.  "There is no village here," says an Alawite general, "that doesn't have a martyr or two" to the Muslims.  SAVE

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America the Biblical

 

The Greeks did not invent equality. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and the gang famously believed that the rich are different from you and me—not merely because they are shaped by their privileges but because they are actually, literally made of superior stuff.

Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece  Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, Robert W. Wallace,  University of California Press.  Athens may have recognized political equality among citizens, but not just anybody could be a citizen.  SAVE

Americanism: the Fourth Great Western Religion  David Gelernter,  Random House.  "America is no secular republic," Gelernter says; "it's a biblical republic."  SAVE

The Scepter Shall Not Depart from Judah  Alan L. Mittleman,  Lexington Books.  There is a "theological-political predicament" in modern Jews' spiritual dependence on their surrounding political systems.  SAVE

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Goodnight, Vienna

 

The Jews of Vienna did not merely understand the world: they took Marx's point and changed it, too. From Freud's psychoanalysis to Wittgenstein's philosophy, from Mahler's music to Herzl's Zionism, they made a unique contribution to modernity.

Fin-de-Siècle Vienna  Carl Schorske,  Vintage Books.  On Freud and his compatriots, who made the city dazzling at the turn of the 20th century.  SAVE

Hitler Takes Austria  TheHistoryTV.  Vienna's citizens welcome the unification of Austria with Germany in the Anschluss of 1938. (Video)  SAVE

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2011: A Year in Books

 

The holidays are over, the coffee-table books have all been unwrapped and set aside, and winter isn't going anywhere for a while. In short, it's time to settle in for some good reading. The literary critic D. G. Myers here presents the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, all of which merit your attention.

2010: A Year in Books  D.G. Myers,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  From the popular to the scholarly, a reader's and buyer's guide to 34 of the best books of 2010.  SAVE

Retrieving American Jewish Fiction  D.G. Myers,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  A historical symposium of some neglected classics, and an introduction to the avot and imahot of American Jewish writing.  SAVE

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View More in Cultures

Insight & Analysis

Germany’s Jewish Voice  Ofer Aderet.  Haaretz.  With an influx of immigrants from Russia and Israel, Germany's Jewish community is the fastest growing in the world. Now a new quarterly heralds the rebirth of Jewish-German culture.  SAVE

Literature for Litvaks  Gil Student.  Torah Musings.  A newly-translated volume of stories gives voice to an anti-Hasidic point of view—in some stories more subtly than in others.  SAVE

The Bad Samaritan  Amy-Jill Levine.  Biblical Archeology Society.  You can't understand the story of the Good Samaritan without knowing that a Samaritan was the last kind of person to whom a Jew would look for help.  SAVE

The Perils of Self-Deception  Colin Rubenstein.  Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.  To imagine that anti-Semitism would evaporate if Israel signed a peace deal with the Palestinians is sheer fantasy.  So why do pundits and policymakers regularly make this claim?.  SAVE

Pound Foolish  John Stoehr.  Forward.  While Pound hailed Hitler, and Gertrude Stein cheered Franco, William Carlos Williams eschewed doctrine and orthodoxy. Herbert Leibowitz's compelling new biography of the modernist poet shows why.  SAVE

Japan’s Inner Israel  Glenn Newman.  Japan Times.  Both Japan and Israel rose from deprivation to prosperity in, historically speaking, the blink of an eye. But now Israel is punching far above its economic weight, while Japan can't seem to get off the mat. What happened?.  SAVE

Diaspora Disneys  Shelley Salamensky.  New York Review of Books.  From Poland to Spain, former Jewish quarters are being turned into theme-park-style tourist attractions—some respectful, some not. But is this fate still better than oblivion?.  SAVE

Audio/Visual

Hava Nagila

 

Probably the most famous and universally beloved Jewish song of the modern era was written to a hasidic melody by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882-1938). A prolific musicologist, composer, and cantor, Idelsohn wrote the song to celebrate the 1917 Balfour Declaration. In 1922, he recorded it with a Berlin men’s choir in a startlingly slow (to today’s ears) tempo. Since then it has been performed, effervescently, by Jews and non-Jews in countless arrangements and settings.

A. Z. Idelsohn  SAVE

Hava Nagila Berlin 1922  SAVE

Hava Nagila Iranian-Style  SAVE

Hava Nagila in Royal Albert Hall  SAVE

Hava Nagila Texas-Style  SAVE

SAVE "Hava Nagila"

Audio/Visual

Hava Nagila

 

Probably the most famous and universally beloved Jewish song of the modern era was written to a hasidic melody by Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882-1938). A prolific musicologist, composer, and cantor, Idelsohn wrote teh song to celebrate the 1917 Balfour Declaration. In 1922, he recorded it with a Berlin men’s choir in a startlingly slow (to today’s ears) tempo. Since then it has been performed, effervescently, by Jews and non-Jews in countless arrangements and settings.

SAVE "Hava Nagila"

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