The Case of American Religious Zionism

Few things divide and provoke American Jews like the question of Zionism. Though many wish to remember otherwise, this was also the case before the founding of Israel in 1948.

The Cosmopolitans  Yehudah Mirsky,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  How many flavors does Zionism come in? The usual answer is three.  SAVE

The Benderly Boys  Allan Arkush,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Central to Samson Benderly's educational operation would be the stimulation of an emotional attachment to the Jewish community in Palestine, through methods including the Ivrit b'Ivrit style of modern Hebrew immersion.  SAVE

American Orthodoxy and Its Discontents  Lawrence Grossman,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Once "a case study in institutional decay," Orthodoxy is now the only form of American Judaism exuding self-confidence. What was gained, and what lost?  SAVE

Rabbi in the New World  Lawrence Grossman,  Forward.  Contradictions, or at least inconsistencies, marked Joseph B. Soloveitchik's involvement in virtually every major issue that confronted modern Orthodoxy.  SAVE

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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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Songs and Psalms

After 17 years in Israel, our family has temporarily relocated to Brooklyn. For a week after we arrived, our pious Jewish neighbors ignored us. Then, on Shabbat, three of them finally approached us, one after another—to tell us that the neighborhood eruv we were using really didn't exist and that we were profaning the Sabbath.

The New Tonalists  Terry Teachout,  Commentary.  After going down one blind alley after another, composers like Dan Asia are returning to the path of the classical tradition.  SAVE

Cautious Revolutionary  David Wolman,  Fanfare.  An interview with Dan Asia: How does a self-described "neo-romantic" see himself in the "post-minimalist world of new music"?  SAVE

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Find, Fix, Finish

What is the threat? Al-Qaeda? "Terrorism"? "Violent religious extremism"? Israeli analysts call it "global jihad," but U.S. leadership has carefully circumscribed it as "al-Qaeda" or, even more narrowly, personified it as Osama bin Laden and his minions, hijackers of planes and Islam.

Nuremberg Diary  G.M. Gilbert,  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  A first-hand account, by a Nuremburg prison psychologist, of the trials that attempted to bring international law to bear on the crimes committed by the Nazi leadership.  SAVE

Guantanamo Documents Revive Debate  Anne E. Kornblut,  Washington Post.  New documents about the detainees are released—and each side in the debate about closing the base claims ammunition for its own position.  SAVE

Police Powers in New York  New York Times.  New York's mayor calls the city's surveillance legal. But the Times has added it to the list of police practices that have "virtually eliminated the presumption of innocence."  SAVE

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The Move that Dare Not Speak Its Name

Recent years have seen a flurry of reports, studies, and worried discussions about strengthening Diaspora Jewry's ties to Israel. But what about strengthening the ties to Israel—or, for that matter, to the Diaspora—of the growing numbers of Israelis who live abroad?

Strengthening Jewish-Israeli Identity of Israelis Abroad  Yogev Karasenty,  Jewish People Policy Institute.  The JPPI report asserts that Israeli government actions can significantly affect the attachment of expatriate Israelis to their home country.  SAVE

The Israeli Diaspora as a Catalyst for Jewish Peoplehood  Reut Institute.  The Reut Institute report argues that many hands besides those of the Israeli government hold the key to Israeli expatriate integration.  SAVE

Mass Jewish Migration Database  Gur Alroey,  University of Haifa.  A massive record of the Jews who emigrated from the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire before World War I.  SAVE

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