People & Places
Getting HitlerTuesday, April 17, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Some cataclysmic events occur with the speed of a train wreck; others unfold over months or even years. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 bestseller The Black Swan argues that the more earth-shattering the event, the less likely that the press will provide an early warning.
Poison PenMonday, April 16, 2012 by D.G. Myers | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
A Nobel Prize-winning German novelist—a former SS soldier, no less—accuses the state of Israel of seeking to exterminate an entire people, and the literary republic yawns. But when Israel bars its accuser from entering the country, because ex-Nazis have no place in the Jewish state, the cries of "bullying" and "censorship" nearly drown out the original accusation.
Not Everything is IlluminatedTuesday, April 10, 2012 by Ben Greenfield | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Judaism is famously infatuated with text; and the New American Haggadah, with contemporary authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander listed as editor and translator, respectively, is the latest in a long line of love letters by Jews to their object of adoration.
Like a PlayerThursday, April 5, 2012 by Elli Fischer | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Sports fans and religious adherents often speak the same language—of allegiance and passion, drama and catharsis, belief and faith, idols and icons, shrines and cathedrals, curses and blasphemy. When these two empires intersect, it is no surprise that there is often a struggle for primacy.
Reading between the ListsWednesday, April 4, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
As long as humans have been writing, humans have been making lists and ranking things. The new Daily Beast/Newsweek list of "America's Top 50 Rabbis for 2012" is, like most American lists, whether of rabbis, cars, or colleges, designed to shape reality as much as reflect it.
The Unseen ShieldTuesday, April 3, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The news report hardly makes an impression on most Israelis: another West Bank checkpoint search, another discovery of explosives and weapons, and the familiar finale: "The suspect was taken in for questioning by the Shin Bet."
Is Football Treyf?Friday, March 30, 2012 by Micah Stein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The Israeli Football League—American football, not soccer—is a curiosity. For starters, it's popular: While the sport has mostly flopped overseas, the IFL has an invested fan base and committed, reasonably talented players.
Art against HistoryThursday, March 29, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Antiquity washes away the immediacy of historical pain and injustice. Our ability to feel suffering is indexed directly to its epoch: the more remote, the more detached we are. Museums play on this—pander to this—and to our forgetfulness. History is softened, elided, or erased.
Make Yourself a TeacherTuesday, March 27, 2012 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The meanings of "Torah" are inexhaustible, but its plainest sense is "teaching." It does not exist apart from being communicated. That circulation between human beings, and between humans and God, both gives Torah life and teaches us that Torah itself teaches life.
Scholarship and Anti-Semitism at YaleMonday, March 26, 2012 by Ben Cohen | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Almost a year has passed since Yale University shuttered the five-year-old Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism, known by the unwieldy acronym "YIISA," and replaced it with the Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism, or "YPSA."
Editors' Picks
S/Z Benjamin Ivry, Forward. Was Stefan Zweig's habit of sending each of his new books to Sigmund Freud an amicable gesture or an invitation to diagnose and cure?
Anti-Semitism without Jews Ben Cohen, Tablet. A prominent challenger to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez isn't Jewish, but his roots are—reason enough for the regime to launch a smear campaign.
Our Maronite Minority Eli Balshan, Times of Israel. Inspired in part by Eliezer Ben Yehuda, two Maronite brothers have taken it upon themselves to revitalize their ancestral Aramaic into a modern, living language.
Food for Peace Kenneth M. Quinn, Huffington Post. Daniel Hillel's micro-irrigation technology, which turns desert into farmland, has earned him the World Food Prize—and the gratitude of people across the Middle East.
Flow of History Harold Brodsky, H-Net. While the Jordan River was agriculturally useless until the modern day, it has been politically and spiritually significant for millennia.
The Benefactors of Breslau Malgorzata Stolarska-Fronia, H-Net. A new book cataloging Jewish welfare institutions in Breslau, Germany (now Poland) shows how philanthropy was central to the cultural exchange that followed the Emancipation.
Jewish is the New Black Peter Wood, Chronicle of Higher Education. Identity group labels seldom work as their proponents hope—and at CUNY, some faculty members see a new taxonomy as rife with the potential to become a tool of exclusion.
Dr. Seuss's War Andres Jauregui, Huffington Post. While best known for works like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss "was haunted by the war in Europe," and was a prolific political cartoonist during the 1940s. Here, a gallery.
Liberty and Espionage Jerusalem Post. The indicted Haaretz reporter Uri Blau is no martyr. There is plenty of scope for journalists to ply their trade without putting themselves above the law and endangering the entire populace.
India's Jewish General Aimee Ginsburg, Open. Asked to name a great Jewish warrior, few Jews would point to Jack Jacob. But in his native India, the Jewish general who won the Indo-Pakistan War is a hero.