Ashkenazim
The Last BooksWednesday, May 1, 2013 by Jonathan Brent | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The invisible structures created by the Jewish people of Eastern Europe over a thousand years were given shape and transmitted through the books and the documents collected by YIVO. These structures still move us. If we do not know what they are, we do not know ourselves.
The Politics of YiddishMonday, 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.
Leaving the GhettoFriday, February 8, 2013 by Jacob Katz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Was there any possibility," asks Jacob Katz in this 1996 Commentary essay, "that the Jews collectively might have been accepted in Europe on their own terms—that is, as a community, with a religion opposed to Christianity?"
Editors' Picks
Torah from Sinai? Marc B. Shapiro, Seforim. Today, Mosaic authorship of the Torah is an Orthodox principle of faith. But, "in medieval Ashkenaz, it was not regarded as heretical to posit post-Mosaic additions."
The Original Jewish Mothers Lawrence Schiffman, LawrenceSchiffman.com. Contrary to claims that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from European converts, genetic analysis shows that 70 percent of them can be traced to four females from the Middle East.
The Khazar Calumny Razib Khan, Discover. A new demographic study resurrects the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars of Eurasia. But the claim flies in the face of history.
Golda, Golda, Get Lost Tamara Zieve, Jerusalem Post. In 1971, young Israelis of Mizrahi descent styled themselves as Israeli Black Panthers and declared war “against the Ashkenazi government.”