History & Ideas
In Israel and in traditional communities, life and liturgy don’t run away from hardship. Most American Jews prefer to think on the brighter side, but that comes at a high cost.
The two giants of Jewish literature come together for a wide-ranging discussion centered around his new book on the seminal Hebrew writers of modernity.
The Israeli historian joins us to talk about his partnership with Sharansky, what he calls the Sovietization of American culture, and much more.
A distinguished historian of the American founding sees religion as a matter of individual belief rather than communal obligation.
Even though the author tries to downplay it, a new book shows how deeply rooted anti-Semitism was in Soviet ideology.
Whether it’s Judeo-Arabic, or Judeo-Italian, or Judeo-Spanish, or the Judeo-German better known as Yiddish, they all mix in varying amounts of Hebrew.
Medieval Spain produced many Jewish geniuses. The poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol, born 1000 years ago, wrote poetry that is still sung in synagogues all over the world.
That’s the contention of a new book by a major historian of ancient Judaism. It deserves serious attention, but it also overstates its case.
Christian Renaissance paintings of the Temple are the visual record of a theology that had devastating consequences in the lives of Jews from antiquity to the Middle Ages and beyond.
Why do Christian depictions of the Jewish Temple look like the Dome of the Rock, the 7th-century Muslim structure built on that site?
The author of our July essay joins us to talk about his ideas.
Latter-day Saints patterned themselves after biblical Israel, and used its traumas to explain their own.
A brief history of an indifferent word.
There are formidable new interpretive resources to make that case.
