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Ethics


Career Corps Career Corps
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The United States has its military academies at West Point and Annapolis. The British put their officers through Sandhurst. But how will the Israeli Defense Forces, a citizen army, train its officers for the 21st century?
Slaughterhouse Rules Slaughterhouse Rules
Friday, July 29, 2011 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Pending approval by its upper house of parliament, the Netherlands will join Switzerland and a handful of other Western countries in mandating that animals slaughtered for food must first be stunned unconscious, generally by a hammer blow to the skull.
Capital Crime.  Capital Punishment? Capital Crime. Capital Punishment?
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Since its founding, the only person ever to be executed by the state of Israel has been the notorious Nazi, Adolf Eichmann. But the brutal murders of Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their young children this past March has the IDF weighing the possibility of seeking the death penalty for the Fogels' murderers.
The Tourist’s Dilemma The Tourist’s Dilemma
Monday, June 20, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

On the southwest coast of Albania on the Ionian Sea, opposite the Greek island of Corfu, beneath the modern town of Saranda, lies the ancient city of Onchesmos. That ancient city had a synagogue.
Before the Law Before the Law
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 by Suzanne Last Stone and Alan M. Dershowitz | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The holiday of Shavuot, which falls this year on June 8 and 9, commemorates the giving of the Law. In video interviews conducted by the Israeli media agency Leadel, the prominent legal scholars Suzanne Last Stone and Alan M. Dershowitz explain the differences between Jewish law and Western law, and how their own interest in the former has informed their careers in the latter. —The Editors
Jews and Capitalism Jews and Capitalism
Friday, June 3, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Why are so many Jews discomfited by capitalism—and not merely by the caricature of capitalism as rapacious speculation and exploitative profiteering but by the very idea of organizing an economy along free-market lines?
The Jewish Way in War The Jewish Way in War
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

How can democracies, acting under the conventions of international law, defeat Islamist terrorists operating by their own benighted rules? How, especially when UN member-states are prepared to enable terrorists by perverting the rules of war and human rights?
American Orthodoxy and Its Discontents American Orthodoxy and Its Discontents
Friday, May 27, 2011 by Lawrence Grossman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

A "case study in institutional decay": that description of Orthodox Judaism in America was offered in 1955 by the late sociologist Marshall Sklare. It has long since entered the gallery of scholarly misjudgments, acknowledged as such by Sklare when events turned out to belie his assessment.
Sympathy for the Devil Sympathy for the Devil
Monday, May 23, 2011 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Occupying a place of particular infamy in Jewish collective memory is an 18th-century serial apostate, sexual deviant, messianic pretender, and chameleonic charlatan. His name was Jacob Frank.
Israel and Western Guilt Israel and Western Guilt
Friday, May 20, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

"Confront Your Privilege." So reads a "subtly coercive" sign on display at tony American liberal-arts colleges. Why coercive? Because, as Wilfred McClay explains in an illuminating recent essay in First Things, what such signs are really telling the students is, "Feel Guilty."
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Editors' Picks
Judaism's Sexual Revolution Dennis Prager, Crisis. When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into heterosexual marriage, it changed the world—and made Western civilization possible. (1993)
Homosexuality and Halakhah Michael Gold, MyJewishLearning. What do traditional Jewish sources actually say about homosexuality?
Judaism as Protest Movement Tomer Persico, 7 Minim. From Abraham to Korah's ill-fated faction to the beseeching prophets and doubting sages, Jewish tradition has always fostered protesters and protests—not least against God Himself.
The Practice of Musar Geoffrey Claussen, Conservative Judaism. The Conservative movement likes to see itself as intellectual one. But it might have something to learn from a 19th-century movement of strenuous moral development.
Face to Face Gavi Brown, Kol Hamevaser. One was a talmudist, the other an ontologist—yet the two figures' work reveals striking similarities. Either it was a case of plagiarism or an instance of cosmic significance.
And Justice for All Gil Student, Torah Musings. While Shmuly Yanklowitz's writing is uneven and his scholarship is suspect, his activist agenda is built on classical Judaism.
Kirk Douglas The Mike Wallace Interview. "I am not even aware whether or not we have former Nazi officers in our production. Very honestly, I wouldn't even allow myself to think in those terms . . . I like to feel that the War is over." (Video; 1957)
How the Left Turned against the Jews Nick Cohen, Standpoint. As Communism gave way to anti-colonialism, Israel remained a target for special rage on the Left, even though Zionism was both a settler movement and an anti-colonial movement.
Torah and Telos Jerome Gellman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. A rational argument for taking one's religious text as divine revelation might have succeeded, were it not for the failure of the author's test-case: his justification for believing in a revealed Torah. (Interview with the book's author here.)      
Turning the Other Tank Eric Cohen, First Things. Stanley Hauerwas argues that being a Christian means never killing others in war. If this is Christianity, then Christianity is a form of eschatological madness.