Politics in America “…the top issue that drove Trump’s voters to the polls was…was immigration, an issue on which we’ve abandoned serious debate…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 29 December 2016 The same white working-class voters who re-elected Obama four years ago did not cast...
Politics in America, Races in America “The moral energy surrounding identity has, of course, had many good effects…but the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life” Author Drew Kaplan Date 29 December 2016 The moral energy surrounding identity has, of course, had many good effects. Affirmative action...
Politics in America Bannon “doesn’t hate Jews; he hates ‘foreigners’, liberals, secularists and elites” Author Drew Kaplan Date 28 December 2016 Populist bias is a lot like the phrase “Make America Great Again.” Only a...
Gender, Modern Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy “The imputation of unstated motives instantly renders toxic any conversation in which it is inserted” Author Drew Kaplan Date 28 December 2016 In any debate over women’s communal and halakhic roles, the Orthodox community’s version of...
Politics in America, Zionism “…by denying liberal principles, Zionism immediately becomes continuous with…the anti-Semitic politics of the sort promoted by the alt-right” Author Drew Kaplan Date 27 December 2016 …by denying liberal principles, Zionism immediately becomes continuous with — rather than contradictory to...
Judaism “Change can be very slow, even inadvertent, in Jewish tradition” Author Drew Kaplan Date 27 December 2016 Change can be very slow, even inadvertent, in Jewish tradition. Present-day academies of Talmudic...
Hanukah, Talmud “The transformation of Hanukkah, as attested in the Babylonian Talmud, serves as an example of a religious dynamic stimulated by the arrival of new ‘religious knowledge'” Author Drew Kaplan Date 26 December 2016 Religious tradition is adept at adaptation. The Babylonian Talmud, in particular, through analogy, and...
Hanukah, Talmud “…the focus of the holiday celebration has shifted from the synagogue to the domestic candle” Author Drew Kaplan Date 26 December 2016 The Babylonian tradition involved only one light. The tradition of gradually increasing or decreasing...
Hanukah, Talmud “Judging from the volume and innovative quality of source material in the Babylonian Talmud in contrast with the rest of the rabbinic corpora, the Babylonian contribution would appear to have been quite decisive in shaping the holiday observances in the direction of emphasizing the kindling of light(s)” Author Drew Kaplan Date 25 December 2016 Judging from the volume and innovative quality of source material in the Babylonian Talmud...
Hanukah, Talmud “It is the Babylonian Talmud that collects the traditions on Hanukkah and creates a lengthy, detailed and coherent discourse on the holiday…” Author Drew Kaplan Date 25 December 2016 The rabbinic sources on Hanukkah, which are not numerous, are unevenly dispersed among the...