For much of Europe, today is the UN-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has dedicated his address this year to children murdered by the Nazis, with the message that "the best tribute to the memory of these children is an ongoing effort to teach the universal lessons of the Holocaust, so that no such horror is visited upon future generations."
I first heard the name Trotsky when I was seven years old. My grandfather, a Jewish tailor from Belarus who arrived in the goldene medine and pulled himself up by his bootstraps to own a men's suit factory in New York, had just gotten a swept-back haircut. He called it a Trotsky.
Trotsky the JewRichard Pipes, Tablet. Attempts to treat Trotsky as an "eminent Jewish figure" must glide over the more savage features of his thought and behavior. SAVE
Trotsky's Jewish QuestionRobert S. Wistrich, Forward. Although Trotsky abandoned Judaism and was actively hostile to Zionism, he was one of the first to warn of the threat to the Jews posed by Nazi Germany. SAVE
Lenin's Bad BloodRuth R. Wisse, Jewish Ideas Daily. Lenin's great-grandfather was a shtetl Jew who married a Christian, then denounced Jews to the tsar. Perhaps violent paranoia ran in the family. SAVE
Some days, I can't help thinking back 25 years to my high-school French course, which is where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu—the happy medium—and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is the happy medium so elusive? Why do I more often feel caught betwixt and between or, even among my fellow Jewish-American writers, alone?
Liberalism and Literary CriticismSeth Mandel, Contentions. Jewish pro-Israel leftists are viscerally unwanted by their peers, who try desperately to strip figures like Leon Wieseltier and David Grossman of their identities. SAVE
Occupy Wall Street, Not PalestineBen Lorber, Palestine Chronicle. The writer complains that as "pro-Palestinian discourse begins to make itself heard" in the OWS movement, "right-wing organizations" are denouncing it as anti-Semitic. SAVE
Write On for Israelwriteonforisrael.org. The advocacy journalism program that trains high school students in pro-Israel writing, speaking, and broadcasting. SAVE
Ryan Braun, the reigning MVP of baseball's National League, is having a rough offseason. On December 12, ESPN reported that Braun had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug (PED) after a league-mandated drug test revealed elevated levels of testosterone in his system.
Braun’s TempleRichard Sandomir, New York Times. Why such interest in whether a ballplayer plays a game or worships on a High Holy Day? Call it the Greenberg-Koufax Yom Kippur Precedent. SAVE
Should We Worry about Adelson?Ira Sharkansky. Jerusalem Post. Sheldon Adelson almost single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich's candidacy alive. Maybe that's bad for the Jews—or maybe Adelson is just providing some ideological balance to George Soros. SAVE
Independent is the New DemocratIlana Ostrin. American Prospect. Jewish affiliation with the Democratic Party has dropped by ten percent since 2009. This won't hurt President Obama—but may affect other electoral races in 2012. SAVE
Cancelling ConversionGil Student. Torah Musings. While many Orthodox rabbis have become too willing to annul conversions, even the non-Orthodox world recognizes that there are some circumstances in which a conversion must be overturned. SAVE
The Big Lie ReturnsBen Cohen. Commentary. As long as the enemies of the Jews control the meaning of the term 'anti-Semitism,' Jews will remain vulnerable to the calumny that they alone are the authors of their own misfortune. SAVE
Reb Shlomo, SuperstarMary Jane Fine. Forward. If Fiddler on the Roof is about tradition, a new musical about Shlomo Carlebach is about breaking with tradition—even if that means, as in Carlebach's case, breaking one's father's heart. SAVE
Bugged by KashrutJonah Lowenfeld. Jewish Journal. Whereas fifty years ago Jews rarely worried about bugs in vegetables, today there is a growing market for bug-free produce which is certified kosher. But stricter observance comes at a price. SAVE
Rules for RevisionistsJonathan S. Tobin. Contentions. By brandishing the name of Saul Alinsky, does Newt Gingrich intend to send out anti-Semitic dog whistles to the Right? Nonsense. SAVE
Third in a series on landmarks in American Jewish literature
In American literature, the critic Leslie Fiedler once quipped, nothing succeeds like failure. But among American Jewish writers, something like the reverse is closer to the truth: for many of their fictional characters, nothing fails so miserably as success. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in The Rise of David Levinsky(1917), the first classic of Jewish fiction in America.
The second in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.
One class is analyzing a talmudic debate after having read it in the original Aramaic; in a neighboring room, students are conversing entirely in Hebrew; in a third, an "Ethicist" column from the New York Times is being examined in light of rabbinic sources; in still another, young men and women are working their way through a biblical text.
As if from a fantastical time machine, some 300 youngsters disembark in the woods of western Pennsylvania to find themselves at the building site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In a quick briefing they are introduced to the biblical passages describing the construction project, invited to imagine the challenges confronting the ancient builders—how to move and hoist heavy loads of quarried stone, how to shape metal into giant candelabra—and then immediately drafted into the mammoth task. Only when their labors are complete, two and a half hours later, do they begin the mundane assignment of meeting their counselors and locating their bunks.
As if from a fantastical time machine, some 300 youngsters disembark in the woods of western Pennsylvania to find themselves at the building site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In a quick briefing they are introduced to the biblical passages describing the construction project, invited to imagine the challenges confronting the ancient builders—how to move and hoist heavy loads of quarried stone, how to shape metal into giant candelabra—and then immediately drafted into the mammoth task. Only when their labors are complete, two and a half hours later, do they begin the mundane assignment of meeting their counselors and locating their bunks.