Open Letter | Brandeis University Press is silencing debate
We are a group of scholars whose research is connected to American Jewish history and experience. We read the preface that Marc Dollinger submitted.
How The New Israel Litmus Test Turns Jews Into Christian Zionists
A new litmus test is pushing our community away from the historic models of American Jewish identity.
Why Conversion Lite Won’t Fix The Intermarriage Problem
Some rabbis argue that Jews should minimize criteria for conversion to counteract intermarriage.
How Trump Pleased Bibi Netanyahu And David Duke Alike
Trump’s response at a press conference to the question about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust was brilliant, and tragic, in that he satisfied Netanyahu while appeasing the anti-Semites with the exact same words.
Reb Zalman Married Counter Culture to Hasidic Judaism
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the important Jewish innovators in postwar America, inspiration to a generation and ecumenical spiritualist, has died at 89.
The Dark Side of Purim
We think of Purim as a day of levity, complete with costumes and debauchery. But while the holiday seems harmless on the surface, it has a dark and dangerous underside.
The Triumph and Tragedy of Counter-Cultural Judaism
An insider looks back at the ’60s Jewish counter-cultural movement led by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach — and explores his current incarnation as a settler icon.
Jacob Frank and the Heresy We Forgot
“History is written by the winners.” Whether or not Napoleon Bonaparte first uttered this, the sentiment behind it applies to the arch-heretic Jacob Frank, who died while Napoleon was still an obscure lieutenant colonel in Corsica. Frank was one of the most enigmatic and bizarre figures in modern Jewish history — a combination of charlatan, opportunist and Jewish religious critic. He grew up as part of the growing Sabbatean movement in Poland, and after numerous incarnations he began his own heretical movement, converting to Christianity with many of his disciples in 1759.
What You Must Think About Zionism
Ask any Jew you know, even one who has a university degree in Jewish studies, who Simon Rawidowicz is. I am willing bet the response will be, “Simon who?” At best, you may get, “Didn’t he once teach at Brandeis a long time ago?” That itself is sufficient cause for David Myers’s new book, “Between Arab and Jew: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz.”