As they formulate a school response to the war, educators might consider three important lessons derived from “Hearts and Minds,” a recent report on Israel education in North American Jewish schools: First, one size does[…]
Month: November 2014
“Courtesy is dead. The plane is its graveyard…”
There’s little sense of a common good, no rules that everybody follows so that nobody gets a raw deal. Instead there’s an ethic of every passenger for himself or herself. The existence of, and market[…]
“The catalyst for pro football’s breakthrough in the latter half of the 1950s and 1960s was the new medium of television”
The catalyst for pro football’s breakthrough in the latter half of the 1950s and 1960s was the new medium of television. The sport’s flow of play could be followed even on a grainy black-and-white screen,[…]
“Thanksgiving is a much needed model for an increasingly secular American Jewry”
Thanksgiving is a much needed model for an increasingly secular American Jewry. Where “cultural Judaism” is often “soft” and “optional”, Thanksgiving has an undeniably “commanding” presence. Who doesn’t come home for Thanksgiving, from wherever that[…]
“One way or another, the Frankfurt School mode of criticism—its skeptical ardor, its relentless scouring of mundane surfaces—has spread far…”
“. When online recappers expend thousands of words debating the depiction of rape on “Game of Thrones,” or when writers publish histories of sneakers or of the office cubicle, they show intense awareness of mass[…]
“Modern Orthodoxy needs intellectual vibrancy in order to flourish…”
Who in the Orthodox community is engaging in original Jewish thought? While Christians have created a 21st-century academic discipline of religious thought, Jewish academics, including Modern Orthodox Jews in the field of Jewish studies, have[…]
“…in Merkaz those learning are doing so for the sake of the nation, while in the haredi yeshivot those learning are doing so for themselves…”
A number of years ago I asked someone in Merkaz ha-Rav how his yeshiva differed from the haredi yeshivot, since in both yeshivot one could find people learning instead of going to the army. He[…]
“…it is problematic to assume that individuals, even if they share a willingness to stretch the boundaries of Orthodoxy, form part of a common accommodative camp…”
In sum, it is problematic to assume that individuals, even if they share a willingness to stretch the boundaries of Orthodoxy, form part of a common accommodative camp. Nor is it possible to quantify the[…]
“Social media enable human relationships to be thicker, wiser, and more stable…”
When the community is mindfully organized, it will have even more substantive and creative interactions during opportunities to meet face-to-face. Most of the catching up has already happened. “What have you been up to these[…]
“Israel was a collective statement on the part of an oppressed and persecuted people that they were tired of being afraid…”
For thousands of years to be a Jew meant being afraid. Afraid of anti-Semites, afraid of pogroms, afraid of the Church, afraid of Islam. Israel was a collective statement on the part of an oppressed[…]