Temple in Southern Varanasi
11 Jan
History, Jewish World

From the Archives | India’s Lasting Gift

This article was originally published in the February 2007 issue of Moment.    India, with 16 official languages and a population of more than a billion people (80 percent Hindu and 13 percent Muslim), is home to the second largest Muslim community in the world. India gallops forward at an eight percent GNP growth per year, but statistics alone cannot capture this booming, contentious democracy that bombards the senses and challenges old certainties. After a week visiting Hindu temples and Mogul palace fortresses in Rajasthan, the State of the Princes, my husband and I arrived at Varanasi, the spirit-soaked city on the Ganges. Along teeming roads our driver wove between wandering cows, loaded camels gazing down imperiously, ox-drawn wooden-wheeled carts, bicycle rickshaws piled so high with brush that their straining drivers all but disappeared, hundreds of rainbow-tasseled vividly...

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Flag of Israel
11 Jan
History, Jewish World

From the Archives | Necessary Losses—and Gains

This article was originally published in the April 2005 issue of Moment.    Some 20 years ago, Judith Viorst's bestseller 'Necessary Losses' seemed to me wise but, in part, remote, written about times to come still hidden below the horizon. Since then, my parents have died and none of numerous relatives in my hometown of New York City is sail alive. I have given up being a full-time editor and become a contributing editor. My husband and I have had a few yellow-light health issues—none, so far, interfering with travel, keeping up with the 11 grandchildren or the pleasantness of planning future events. I'm in the run-up to 70. That's caught my attention, more with amazement than fear or dismay. I kind of like my older self. Age brings willingness to say things that go crosswise to common...

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26 Oct
History, Latest, Zoominars

Why 1973, 1977, 1989 & 1993 are Critical Years at the end of the 20th Century with Deborah Dash Moore and Robert Siegel

From Watergate, the assassination of Allende in Chile and the Yom Kippur War to the election of Menachem Begin, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the march for Soviet Jewry and the signing of the Oslo Accords, a lot happened in the world in 1973, 1977, 1989 and 1993. Join American Jewish historian, Deborah Dash Moore, editor-in-chief at The Posen Library for a discussion about these events and the impact they had on the Jewish community. Moore is in conversation with Robert Siegel, Moment special literary contributor and former senior host of NPR’s All Things Considered.

This program is a continuation of Moment’s time symposium where we explored the most important years in Jewish history and is cosponsored with The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization.

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18 May
History, Latest, Zoominars

Henry Ford and Antisemitism Between World War I & World War II with Historians Pam Nadell and Daniel Greene

In the years between World War I and World War II, American society became increasingly xenophobic and prejudiced against minorities; these years also are considered the apogee of American antisemitism. One man, perhaps more than any other, played an outsized role in disseminating it. His name was Henry Ford.

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27 Apr
History, Latest, Zoominars

Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East with Journalists Gershom Gorenberg and Dan Raviv

In 1942 the Nazis came close to conquering the Middle East during World War II. Gershom Gorenberg , an award-winning journalist and author, spent years researching and piecing together the truth about Rommel’s army and just how close it was to Cairo and Tel Aviv. He will discuss his new book, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East, and share the journey that took him around the world to learn more about this fascinating story of espionage and intrigue. Gershom will be in conversation with former CBS News correspondent and Moment contributor Dan Raviv.

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A Tale of a Niggun by Elie Wiesel with Elisha Wiesel and Mark Podwal
06 Apr
Elie Wiesel Zoominars, History, Latest, Zoominars

A Tale of a Niggun by Elie Wiesel with Elisha Wiesel and Mark Podwal

After Elie Wiesel died, a little-known narrative poem that he wrote in the 1970s, A Tale of a Niggun, was rediscovered. Based on an actual event during the Holocaust, the poem was so moving that it was turned into a book. Join Elie’s son Elisha—who pays tribute to his father with the book’s introduction— and Elie’s dear friend—award-winning artist Mark Podwal—who illustrated the book, as they discuss how the poem was discovered, why it is so important and the power of wordless Jewish melodies. With Moment Editor-in-Chief Nadine Epstein, editor of Elie Wiesel: An Extraordinary Life.

Held in observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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Hitler Balcony
02 Apr
History, Jewish World, Latest

Should Vienna’s ‘Hitler Balcony’ Be Opened to the Public?

On the morning of March 15, 1938, Adolf Hitler left his room at Vienna’s Imperial Hotel for the short ride down the Ringstrasse to the Neue Burg, the final wing added to the sprawling Hofburg imperial palace completed in 1919. The Neue Burg is situated on Heldenplatz (Heroe’s Square) where some 250,000 Austrians had gathered to hear him speak. Standing on the large balcony overlooking the square, Hitler proclaimed the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into the greater German Reich: “The oldest Ostmark”—the Nazi name for Austria, meaning its eastern borderland—“of the German people shall be the youngest bulwark of the German nation and thus the German empire.” Since 1945, the balcony has been closed to the general public. Now, with the opening of the House of Austrian History, Vienna’s contemporary history museum, in 2018, the...

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