31
Mar
Ask the Rabbis // Special Passover Edition
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By
Moment
Is it permitted to invite a non-Jew to your Seder? And is it a good idea?
22
Mar
What Lincoln Meant to America’s Jews
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By
Sala Levin
by Eileen Lavine
"The history of the Jews in America would have been quite different without Abraham Lincoln," says Jonathan Sarna, co-author of a new book...
16
Mar
Alan Gross: A Profile in Art and Courage
The Washington, DC resident and former USAID subcontractor was arrested in 2009 for bringing computer and networking equipment to Cuba’s Jewish community. Two years later, he was convicted of being “a threat to the security and integrity of the state,” and sentenced to 15 years. As a prisoner, Gross lived his life in the confines of a small cell, fighting anger, boredom and declining health…
11
Mar
Editing the Editor
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The Education of an Interloper
by Jack Miles
It was as a student at the Hebrew University during the 1966-1967 academic year that I was first introduced to...
11
Mar
Curating a New Jewish Canon
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When Jack Miles approached me with the proposition to edit the Judaism volume of the projected Norton Anthology of World Religions, I was naturally flattered but also confounded. There are, of course, many anthologies of Judaism in different formats. But the Norton anthologies are different.
10
Mar
Book Review // The UnAmericans
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“Listen,” says Tomás to his daughter, Daniela. “I know what you wrote.” Tomás is an academic, a Czech, who got out of Prague before the fall of communism, along with his wife, Katka, and baby Daniela. Now, he’s teaching at a two-bit college in Maine, divorced from Katka when their little girl was only two, and nearly estranged from his grown daughter, now a playwright. As “The Quietest Man” begins, Daniela has sold her very first play—and her father, the tale’s narrator, is determined to use her good fortune to reconnect with her…
10
Mar
Talk of the Table | Kosher Cheese Comes of Age
When Brent Delman was growing up in Cleveland, his culturally Jewish family, like their Eastern European forebears, ate lots of soft, fresh cheese—cream cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese—without worrying much about whether it was kosher. After all, cheese is just curdled milk, and as long as it’s not eaten with meat, what could be treif about it?
03
Mar
Anita Diamant & Dara Horn: In Conversation
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We live in the era of Jewish historical fiction. Hundreds of novels set at some point in the long Jewish past have been published in recent years, some based on biblical stories or Jewish folk tales, others built around major historical figures. The phenomenon shows no sign of slowing, with readers continuing to greedily devour historical fiction, and writers delighted to feed their addiction.
03
Mar
The New Sultan of Turkey
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Former Prime Minister—now President—Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Party are more powerful than ever. Is the nation’s democracy under siege?
By Yigal Schleifer
Adiminutive 63-year-old with dyed...
03
Mar
Opinion // Ben Cohen
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By
Ben Cohen
Blaming the Jews, Again: European intellectuals have come up with a nasty new twist to anti-Semitism.
03
Mar
Opinion// Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Islamophobia, The Flip Side of Anti-Semitism: We Jews need to be careful about diminishing and defaming Muslims.
03
Mar
Opinion // Shmuel Rosner
Pity the Israeli Voter: No matter which party is in power, Israelis will end up disappointed.