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Events


Sin City on the Sea? Sin City on the Sea?
Thursday, December 9, 2010 by Hillel Halkin | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Tel Avivians are rubbing their eyes these days. Until lately so little thought of by the world that many tourists to Israel never bothered to visit it at all, their city is suddenly high on the places-to-be lists.
Fire and Resilience Fire and Resilience
Tuesday, December 7, 2010 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Along the flanks of Israel's Carmel range, just below the scene of the past days' cataclysm, it is possible to see, in ancient caves whose ceilings are caked with millennia of soot, some of the earliest evidence of the human use of fire.
A Jewish Renaissance? A Jewish Renaissance?
Monday, November 15, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In recent years Israel has become a vast open-air laboratory for experiments in Judaism, re-fashioning rituals, reading old texts through new lenses, scrambling and fracturing familiar dichotomies between secular and religious. Secular yeshivot, mainstream performers singing medieval Hebrew hymns, non-denominational "prayer communities" in hip Tel Aviv, kabbalistic therapy movements, Judaism festivals on once-socialist kibbutzim—something is going on here, but what?
The Warrior Rabbi The Warrior Rabbi
Friday, November 5, 2010 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Praise of military virtue, prominent in the Bible, is almost non-existent in the Talmud, which, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews by the Romans, either ignores wartime feats or re-interprets them as allegories of intellectual or spiritual prowess. The Talmud's relative silence on the subject would prove enduring. Until the second half of the 20th century, with few exceptions, military virtue was consistently depreciated in traditional Jewish thought.
The Romance of Gush Etzion The Romance of Gush Etzion
Friday, September 3, 2010 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The modern return of the Jewish people to their homeland succeeded thanks to the extraordinary tenacity of pioneering individuals who, in a dangerous environment, created new communities from scratch. One such community, or rather series of communities, is the Etzion district—in Hebrew, Gush Etzion—located along the ancient mountain route between Jerusalem and Hebron. The first three communities built by Jewish settlers were completely destroyed by Arabs. The fourth still stands today.
Cemetery Politics Cemetery Politics
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Allan Nadler | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Among the many bones its various enemies pick with the Jewish state, one has been much in the news lately: bones, very dry bones, residing in cemeteries both real and imagined all across the country.  
A Grim Teaching A Grim Teaching
Friday, August 27, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Every first-year law student knows that hard cases make bad law. In Israel, a particularly hard case lies in the ongoing controversy around an inflammatory Hebrew-language volume of Jewish religious law (halakhah) that offers justifications for violent treatment of non-Jews in general and of Israel's foes in particular. The debate has highlighted longstanding divisions within Israeli society; now that the courts and the police have gotten into the act, it has also highlighted the difficulties of drawing meaningful lines between free speech and incitement.
On Eagles’ Wings On Eagles’ Wings
Monday, August 23, 2010 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The story of Israel's determination to survive is inextricably linked to the military aircraft deployed to defend its skies and take the battle to the enemy. A new chapter is now opening with the decision by Defense Minister Ehud Barak to approve, pending cabinet ratification, the purchase from the United States of twenty F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft at a base price of $96 million each. The manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, promises the new jet will be capable of penetrating the most sophisticated air defenses. Unfortunately, the plane is only now going into production and won't reach the Israel Air Force for...
Limited Partnership Limited Partnership
Monday, August 16, 2010 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Celebrating its Independence Day on August 15, the nation of India marked 63 years since the end of British rule in the sub-continent. In light of the two countries' more or less contemporaneous struggle for self-determination in the immediate aftermath of World War II, one might have thought that India would establish close ties with the newly born state of Israel straightaway. It did not happen.
The New Israel Museum The New Israel Museum
Friday, August 13, 2010 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

An expanded and revamped Israel Museum re-opened to the public in late July after three years of renovations. While the modest architecture remains as it was, the modernist cubes rolling with the Jerusalem landscape, the jumble of buildings has been streamlined: 25,000 square feet of exhibition space have been added, but the number of items on display has been reduced by a third. Overall, the design is significantly more user-friendly, with a spacious new entrance hall leading to the museum's remarkable collections, including its three most significant wings: archeology, Jewish art and life, and fine art.
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Editors' Picks
What's Under the Bridge Shmuel Rosner, New York Times. The bureaucratic brouhaha over the unsound Mughrabi bridge was really about the attempt by some Muslim leaders to deny Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.
Broken Barometers Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post. Linus Pauling scoffed at Dan Shechtman: "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." Now Shechtman has collected his Nobel Prize—and Hillary Clinton should take heed.
Sound Tracks Haim O. Rechnitzer, H-Net. The so-called authentic Hebrew pronunciation that prevailed in Israel's schools was simply a version of the Ashkenazic speakers' attempt to sound more Sephardic.
The Real Story David Hazony, Forward. In the hysterical response to an ad campaign targeted at expat Israelis, the insecurity of American Jews is laid bare.
Vorsprung durch Technik Katia Moskvitch, BBC News. Israel has more active technology start-ups than any country outside the U.S. In fact, according to one serial entrepreneur, the creation of the country itself was "a start-up on the large scale."
Hezbollah Waits and Prepares Nicholas Blanford, Wall Street Journal. Even as the Lebanese militant group has evolved into the most formidable non-state military force in the world, its single-minded focus is on the next conflict with Israel.
False Equivalence Nathan Jeffay, Jewish Chronicle. It is supremely irresponsible to equate Shalit's captivity to Pollard's imprisonment, or the former's inhumane abduction by Hamas to the latter's due process in the U.S.
The Voice of a Woman Shmuel Rosner, New York Times. If many Orthodox Jews believe themselves to be forbidden from hearing a woman sing, how far should the Israeli military go to facilitate their observance?
Check Mating Ori J. Lenkinsky, +972. An Israeli organization offering a liberal alternative to Rabbinate-approved weddings has met its end.
Release Marwan Barghouti Avinoam Bar-Yosef, New York Times. Israel isn't the only government afraid of releasing Palestinian terrorists. There's one whom Mahmoud Abbas would be happy to keep behind bars.