November 2014 – Excerpted

“The Gaza war presents Jewish schools with a teachable moment, a time to explore with their students…the asymmetrical struggle in which Israel is engaged and the surge in hatred confronting Jews…in many parts of the world”

30 November 2014 Drew KaplanEducation

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[…]

“Courtesy is dead. The plane is its graveyard…”

30 November 201430 November 2014 Drew KaplanAmerica

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”

30 November 2014 Drew KaplanFootball

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”

27 November 201423 November 2014 Drew KaplanThanksgiving

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…”

26 November 201423 November 2014 Drew KaplanCulture

“. 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…”

26 November 201423 November 2014 Drew KaplanModern Orthodoxy

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…”

25 November 201423 November 2014 Drew KaplanHasidim

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…”

25 November 201423 November 2014 Drew KaplanModern Orthodoxy

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[…]

“Israel was a collective statement on the part of an oppressed and persecuted people that they were tired of being afraid…”

24 November 201423 November 2014 Drew KaplanIsrael

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[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Month: November 2014

“The Gaza war presents Jewish schools with a teachable moment, a time to explore with their students…the asymmetrical struggle in which Israel is engaged and the surge in hatred confronting Jews…in many parts of the world”

“Courtesy is dead. The plane is its graveyard…”

“The catalyst for pro football’s breakthrough in the latter half of the 1950s and 1960s was the new medium of television”

“Thanksgiving is a much needed model for an increasingly secular American Jewry”

“One way or another, the Frankfurt School mode of criticism—its skeptical ardor, its relentless scouring of mundane surfaces—has spread far…”

“Modern Orthodoxy needs intellectual vibrancy in order to flourish…”

“…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…”

“…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…”

“Israel was a collective statement on the part of an oppressed and persecuted people that they were tired of being afraid…”