The grassroots revolts that erupted in the Arab world from 2010 onwards, widely known as the Arab Spring, held out the tantalizing promise of positive transformation in the Middle East. “For the first time, mass movements of ordinary people sought to take their political fate into their own hands and shape a better future for […]
Two years have passed since a neo-Nazi thug burst into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 congregants in the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. Eighty three minutes elapsed from the moment Robert Bowers entered the shul until he was apprehended by the police on that cloudy Saturday morning on October […]
Chava Rosenfarb was a major twentieth century Yiddish poet and novelist who remains largely unknown outside the tight circle of Yiddish literature. The lot of a Yiddish writer can be difficult, her daughter, Goldie Morgentaler, suggested at a webinar on November 5 sponsored by the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the […]
La Gloriosa, the liberal revolution that rocked conservative Spain on its heels in 1868, forced Queen Isabella II to leave the country and ushered in an age of religious freedom. During this hopeful period, when only a smattering of Jews lived in Spain, European Jewish notables commended the Spanish authorities for having been open to […]
When Donald Trump assumed the American presidency on January 20, 2017, he declared, “I would love to be the one who made peace with Israel and the Palestinians. That would be such a great achievement.” Nearly four years on, with the presidential election less than a week away, Trump has yet to implement his fondly-held […]
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Chinese city of Shanghai was home to more Jews than any other metropolis in Asia. Congested, cosmopolitan and utterly exotic, its population exceeded three million, of whom 49,000 were foreigners, including about 20,000 Jews. Shanghai’s Jewish community was extremely diverse, consisting of Middle Eastern, Russian and Central […]
The rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied countries is an oft-repeated story in Holocaust literature. Max Wallace’s impassioned book, In The Name of Humanity: The Secret Deal To End The Holocaust (Penguin Random House), is the latest addition to that list. Wallace focuses on the efforts of three Swiss nationals, a Swedish-based German Jew and a […]
British Jews in the mid-19th century faced a difficult dilemma regarding their identity: how could they be really English without ceasing to be Jewish? It was not a uniquely British problem. European Jews trying to reconcile their individualism with the requirements of traditional Judaism were exactly in the same situation. Sarah Abosch-Jacobson, an American scholar, examines […]
Lior Sternfeld, a professor of history and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, has written a nuanced work on Iran’s Jewish community and Israel’s relations with Iran. These are highly-charged topics, given Iran’s hostility to Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution and the sometimes precarious position of Jews in Iranian society. In his book, Between […]
Israel’s image on the political Left has been increasingly tarnished since the 1967 Six Day War, which utterly transformed the Arab-Israeli conflict. Once embraced by most progressives as a shining light of democracy in a dark region of despotism, Israel was repudiated by leftists as a colonialist, racist state, while its adversary, the Palestinians, were […]