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Anti-Semitism


You Only Live Twice You Only Live Twice
Tuesday, August 6, 2013 by Michel Gurfinkiel | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

European Judaism looks healthy, and secure. And yet, the majority of European Jews, seconded by many Jewish and non-Jewish experts, insist that catastrophe may lie ahead. Read in full on Mosaic. 
Christopher Hitchens’s Jewish Problem Christopher Hitchens’s Jewish Problem
Tuesday, May 28, 2013 by Benjamin Kerstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In another highlight from our archives, Benjamin Kerstein inquires into a revered writer's virulent hostility toward Judaism (December 13, 2010).
Christianity: Good for the Jews? Christianity: Good for the Jews?
Friday, May 24, 2013 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Examining the state of contemporary Christendom in an article first published January 5, 2012, Elliot Jager asks whether Jews have an interest in seeing Christianity thrive—and answers yes.
Anti-Semitism and Man at Yale Anti-Semitism and Man at Yale
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Continuing our retrospective, we revisit Alex Joffe's critique of the unwillingness of Western universities to confront contemporary anti-Semitism, first published June 13, 2011. 
Menachem Begin: A New Life Menachem Begin: A New Life
Friday, May 3, 2013 by Asaf Romirowsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Ensuring that another Holocaust would never take place was Menachem Begin's paramount concern, even when he was Prime Minister of Israel, pursuing Yasir Arafat in his Beirut bunker.
“They All Could Have Been Saved” “They All Could Have Been Saved”
Thursday, May 2, 2013 by Lance J. Sussman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus personally rescued 50 Jewish children from Nazi-era Vienna and brought them home to Philadelphia.  A new documentary tells their story—and contrasts it with the apathy shown by their community.
The Politics of Yiddish The Politics of Yiddish
Monday, April 29, 2013 by Ruth Wisse | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Jews who hold on to, or reach back for, the Yiddishkeyt of Yiddish yearn not merely for a declining language but for the social and political ideal that seems embedded in it.  
Zionism Before Herzl Zionism Before Herzl
Monday, April 22, 2013 by Erika Dreifus | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In 1876, 21 years before Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, a non-Jewish woman, writing for an English audience, published a novel with a powerful Zionist message.  She went by the name of George Eliot. 
The Betrayal of Salonika’s Jews The Betrayal of Salonika’s Jews
Thursday, April 18, 2013 by Andrew Apostolou | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

When the Germans entered Salonika on April 6, 1941, they found a willing cadre of collaborators and a broad section of Greek Christian opinion hostile to the Jews.
The New Rosh Hashanah The New Rosh Hashanah
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The Jewish New Year is characterized by an uneasy combination of stock-taking and solemn celebration.  Yom Ha’atzma’ut, as the birthday of the Jewish state, is beginning to acquire a similar character.
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Editors' Picks
"I Was a Nazi, and Here's Why" Helen Epstein, New Yorker. In 1963, Melita Maschmann published a memoir of her Nazi youth.  Fifty years later, she is remembered by her best childhood friend—and first victim.
Renaissance in Budapest Andrew Connelly, Helene Bienvenu, Christian Science Monitor. The anti-Semitic demagoguery peddled by Hungary's fascist Jobbik party has prompted fresh Jewish cultural and political engagement.
Fear in France Clémence Boulouque, Tablet. Anti-Semitic attacks in France are becoming deadlier and more frequent, but the French public remains indifferent.
Kissinger the Jew Gil Troy, Tablet. “The outsider even as an insider, he endured the president’s anti-Semitic rants—and then endured the same contemptuous cries of ‘Jew-boy’ from harsh critics in Israel.”
“Hitler's Reign of Terror” Emily Greenhouse, New Yorker. A 1934 documentary of Nazi oppression might have galvanized America against Hitler; but under pressure from Germany, the film was banned.
Ghosts of Scandals Past Rafael Medoff, JNS. Seventy years ago, FDR used the IRS to target a group lobbying for the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany; but Roosevelt's investigators ended up as sympathizers.
Boycotting the Boycott Charlie Laderman, Standpoint. Instead of "respecting” the boycott, Spanish novelist Antonio Munoz Molina accepted the Jerusalem prize  saying, "there is in Israel a society that is alive, democratic, pluralistic and open, in which I can recognize myself as a citizen."
Nabokov's Jews Benjamin Ivry, Forward. A sympathetic portrayer of Jews in his fiction, Vladimir Nabokov denounced anti-Semitism as "philistinism in all its phases" in both Russia and the United States.
Beyond Emancipation Robert Fine, Fathom. "Mendelssohn insisted that the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment of the 18th century, was about the education and advancement of Jews, not about saving humanity from their allegedly noxious influence."
Whitewashing White Supremacy Ben Cohen, Contentions. Delegates at the World Jewish Congress expected Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, to commit to eliminating anti-Semitism from public life. They were disappointed.