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In observance of Shavuot, Jewish Ideas Daily will not publish on May 28.

Rachel Beer.

The First Lady of Fleet Street

 

Her story is as old as Eve—lust for knowledge and power, disillusion, tragedy and rebirth—and as new as the modern world's technologically based global empires. It begins in the ghettos of Frankfurt and the cities of ancient Babylonia and ends in the mansions of Mayfair and country estates of England.

The Dreyfus Affair  George Whyte, Martin GilbertPalgrave MacMillan.  A day-by-day account of the drama that shook French society at the turn of the 20th century and reverberated throughout the world.  SAVE

Women, Science, and Myth  Sue Vilhauer RosserABC-CLIO.  The Victorian medical theory that educating women caused infertility, hysteria, and more was heir to a long, jaw-dropping history.  SAVE

SAVE "The First Lady of Fleet Street"

Citizenship papers from the author's family.

Righteous Among Our Nation

 

Even before visitors walk through the door of Yad Vashem, they see a powerful tribute to Holocaust heroism. Along the Avenue of the Righteous leading to the museum, thousands of trees bloom in honor of the approximately 21,000 "Righteous Among the Nations," courageous Gentiles who defied the Nazis and risked their lives to save Jews from deportation.

Visas for Life: Rabbi Jehuda, Deborah, and Moses Glasner  U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Unauthorized Salvadoran citizenship paper issued by Mandel-Mantello to the author's grandparents and uncle.  SAVE

Visas for Life: Rabbi Akiba, Hermine, and Sulamith Glasner  U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Unauthorized Salvadoran citizenship paper issued by Mandel-Mantello to the author's great-grandparents and great-aunt.  SAVE

Mandel-Mantello’s Mission  U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  How a Hungarian Jew launched an effort to rescue thousands of Jews across the continent. (Video)  SAVE

A Search for Answers  Shir Ziv, Gaylen Ross, Shmarya RosenbergFailed Messiah.  Who was Rudolf Kasztner really? A traitor, or a hero? A scapegoat, or the man who chose to "play God" and seal fates for life and death? (Film review and audio interview with the director of Killing KasztnerSAVE

SAVE "Righteous Among Our Nation"

Getting Hitler

 

Some cataclysmic events occur with the speed of a train wreck; others unfold over months or even years. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 bestseller The Black Swan argues that the more earth-shattering the event, the less likely that the press will provide an early warning.

The Overseas Correspondent  Peter OsnosForeign Affairs.  The craft of reporting from abroad, says the editor and former Washington Post journalist, is going the way of the blacksmith.  SAVE

Foreign Reporting  Megan GarberNeiman Journalism Lab.  Harvard's Neiman Foundation tries to figure out how foreign correspondents can operate in the changed environment of the 21st century.  SAVE

Interview with Andrew Nagorski  Jennie Rothenberg GritzAtlantic.  Nagorski tried to put himself in the shoes of reporters in Hitler's Berlin, without benefit of hindsight: "What would I have understood?"  SAVE

What Americans Knew  Jim WillisGreenwood.  With many reporters deluded about Hitler's intentions, it was not until 1938 that most U.S. newspaper readers understood the menace of Nazi anti-Semitism.  SAVE

"Anti-Semitism Sweeping Germany Like Plague"  JTA.  . . . and other reportage from the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.  SAVE

SAVE "Getting Hitler"

Poison Pen

 

A Nobel Prize-winning German novelist—a former SS soldier, no less—accuses the state of Israel of seeking to exterminate an entire people, and the literary republic yawns. But when Israel bars its accuser from entering the country, because ex-Nazis have no place in the Jewish state, the cries of "bullying" and "censorship" nearly drown out the original accusation.

An Open Letter to Günter Grass  Daniel JohnsonNew York Sun.  After 60 years, was it Grass's conscience that prompted him to admit that he belonged to the Waffen SS? "The absence of contrition . . . excludes that possibility. I am afraid that the most cynical motive is also the most plausible: You had an autobiography to sell." (2006; Part II is here.)  SAVE

The New Prejudice  Howard JacobsonIndependent.  By brute consensus, now, Israel is the proof that Jews did not adequately learn the lesson of the Holocaust.  SAVE

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism  Robert WistrichJewish Political Studies Review.  Anti-Zionism uses stereotypes concerning the "Jewish/Zionist lobby," Israeli/Jewish "criminality," and Sharonist "warmongering" that are fundamentally manipulative and anti-Semitic.  SAVE

SAVE "Poison Pen"

French Lessons

 

The saga that captured headlines around the world last week came to an end when Mohamed Merah—who had murdered four people, including three children, at the Ozer Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, France—was shot dead by French police. Before his death, Merah told police negotiators that he was a member of al-Qaeda.

Red Flag  Gerald WarnerScotsman.com.  While the left steadfastly clings to the doctrine that high immigration can never lead to social problems, it has lost its stranglehold over public debate.  SAVE

Vive la Jihad!  Michel GurfinkielPJMedia.  Increasingly frequent anti-Semitic violence, a growing wave of anti-Zionism, and the legal threat to ritual slaughter have left the French Jewish community vulnerable on several fronts.  SAVE

French Muslims Training with the Taliban  Associated Press.  Pakistani intelligence officials are trying to determine whether the Toulouse shooter was among the dozens of French Muslims who have trained with the Taliban.  SAVE

SAVE "French Lessons"

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Insight & Analysis

How Bad Faith Drives Out Good  Melanie PhillipsStandpoint.  Religion, or more precisely the religion of the Bible, and more precisely still the Judaism at its core, is the crucible of reason. Those who reject the religion of the Bible are rejecting reason itself.  SAVE

Making "Unofficial" Jews Official  Dianna CahnTimes of Israel.  Bulgaria's fast-track conversions for Jews whose identity has been erased under Communism might not meet the standards of the Israeli chief rabbinate—but the alternative is to lose them altogether.  SAVE

Odyssey in Odessa  Paul BergerForward.  A century ago, Odessa's rambunctious ghetto rivaled New York's Lower East Side as a melting pot. Now? "If you want the real Moldavanka you must go to Brooklyn.".  SAVE

Columbus the Converso  Charles GarciaCNN.  Columbus's voyage was not funded by Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish conversos and another prominent Jew. Was he meant to find gold to finance the Jewish conquest of Jerusalem?.  SAVE

My Heart is in the East (of Europe)  Timothy SnyderWall Street Journal.  Not many Ashkenazi Jews are nostalgic for life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—though for centuries, Poland claimed the most vibrant Jewish community in the world.  SAVE

With Friends Like These  Benjamin WeinthalJerusalem Post.  While the prevalence of overt anti-Zionism across Europe is notorious, it is less well known that even Europeans who claim to be pro-Israel are invariably hostile to the Jewish state.  SAVE

A Heretic in the Truth  Zachary Micah GartenbergJewish Review of Books.  Spinoza takes Maimonides' characterization of miracles as divinely implanted—but still natural—anomalies in the regular course of things. Then Spinoza adds a twist.  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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