From New Year to Arbor Day

 

The holiday of Tu Bishvat ("the fifteenth of Shvat") falls this year on Wednesday, February 8. What are its origins, and when and why did it become incorporated into the calendar as the Jewish "Arbor Day"?

When Have "Most of the Rains Passed"?  Yair Goldreich,  Bar-Ilan University.  Analyzing the climatic factors that help determine the date of Tu Bishvat.  SAVE

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The Dangerous Mr. Nelson

 

Eric Nelson is a danger to academia. You would not think so from his background. He is the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University. He has had a proper education, at Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Jerusalem and Athens  Leo Strauss,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Strauss's seminal essay on the Greeks, the Hebrew Bible, and the profound differences between the two.  SAVE

Created Equal  Joshua Berman,  Oxford University Press.  While ancient Greece is often considered the cradle of political thought, "the patrimony of modern political thought rests no less squarely in the texts of the Bible."  SAVE

The Bible and the Good Life  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Arguing with God is one thing. Where is the evidence that the Bible is a philosophical text?  SAVE

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The Pale God

 

Imagine God not as a benign force infusing the universe with love and sustaining it with mercy, and not as a stern judge smiting sinners from on high with his cosmic zap-gun, but as a grandfatherly figure, kind but, truth be told, somewhat out of it, sitting in a corner, tolerant of the various paths his children have chosen.

A Portrait of Israeli Jewry  Asher Arian, Ayala Keissar-Sugarmen,  Avi Chai Foundation.  A comprehensive study of religious behavior among Israeli Jews, worshiping Spinoza's pale God. (PDF)  SAVE

Secularism and Its Discontents  Yehudah Mirsky,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  A dependence on the idea of Jewish "tradition" has been a hallmark of Jewish secularists and proto-secularists for nine centuries or so.  SAVE

Spinoza: A Life  Steven Nadler,  Cambridge University Press.  The first complete biography of Spinoza in any language—and a portrait of 17th-century Jewish Amsterdam.  SAVE

Gender Trouble  Yehudah Mirsky,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Israel's secularists have their work cut out for them in implementing their vision of a moderate, state-friendly Judaism.  SAVE

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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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View More in Middle Age & Renaissance

Insight & Analysis

Disjecta Membra  Benjamin Balint.  Los Angeles Review of Books.  Not for nothing was the Cairo Genizah called "the Living Sea Scrolls": its discoverers revolutionized the study of Mediterranean Jewish life at the very moment that it was drawing to a close.  SAVE

Restrictions on the Reformation  Dean Phillip Bell.  H-Net.  The Hebraism which permeated the Reformation did not necessarily translate into increased tolerance of Jews.  SAVE

Our Ethiopian Brothers  Elad Uzan.  Jerusalem Post.  Why haven't Israelis come to the aid of Ethiopian Jews, as they have for African non-Jews?.  SAVE

Communal Table  Stanley Ginsberg.  Forward.  What exactly are "Jewish baked goods"? The ones that come first to mind—bagels, rugelach, challah—can all be traced back to the Gentile European societies in which the Jews found themselves living at various times.  SAVE

Yehuda Halevi’s Death and the Cairo Genizah  Eliezer Brodt.  Seforim.  Legend says the great 12th-century Spanish hymnist reached Eretz Yisrael but was killed at Jerusalem's city gate. Genizah documents suggest that the legend was based on fact.  SAVE

Religion as a Chain of Memory  Alan Brill.  Book of Doctrines and Opinions.  The medieval Ashkenazic memory of many 20th-century Jews thinkers is fading. What will take its place?.  SAVE

Choose Your Poison  Philologos.  Forward.  Why do some say l'chaim when blessing wine: to confirm that the drink hasn't been poisoned, to dispel grim associations, or simply to make sure that all present are ready for the blessing?.  SAVE

Jerusalem Letter

The Sephardi Turn

 

Aryeh Tepper

The stagnation of Jewish tradition is hardly a new story. In a sense, it's a modern Jewish trope. In the 19th century, both the Reform and Conservative movements emerged as responses to this perceived atrophy. Leading Orthodox rabbis, some of whom agreed with the reformers' critique, devised their own attempts to revive the tradition—if, naturally, along more traditionalist lines. Unfortunately, none succeeded in arresting the decline.

Continue Reading "The Sephardi Turn"  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  SAVE

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