Lessons from ceramic shards.

Midrash as literary revolt against Hellenism.

A rabbi’s provocative thesis.

The menorah and a tale of two flames.

Some disjointed aphorisms may be a polemic against a popular philosophy.

The Greeks, like their anti-Zionist heirs, sought to strike at the heart of Jewish difference.

Jews were neither xenophobes nor perpetual victims.

And may help clarify Jerusalem’s borders at the time.

Including a romance about the biblical Joseph.

Along with a Byzantine church.

It’s more than a family squabble.

Justice would come to the oppressive Greeks in the afterlife.

A rabbi’s provocative thesis.

In Culture and Anarchy, the preeminent Victorian intellectual Matthew Arnold famously wrote of the contest between those human endeavors that are noble, ennobling, and beautiful. . .