Jerome Chanes
By Jerome Chanes
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Opinion Losing a Precious Outlet for Jewish Culture
When the Foundation for Jewish Culture closes its doors sometime next year, there won’t be many mourners saying Kaddish. Instead, the prevailing communal sentiment may very well be: “Yawn. We have too many agencies; one less will not matter!” But Kaddish ought be said for the FJC. The group’s lonely mourners will be those of…
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Culture Could Resurgence of Anti-Semitism Lead To a Second Holocaust?
● Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives By Alvin H. Rosenfeld Indiana University Press, 576 pages, $35 It is unbelievable that in 2013 we are still talking about the foul topic of anti-Semitism. “The dislike of the unlike,” in historian Salo Baron’s pithy locution. Whatever the catch phrase, there are few phenomena in history that have a…
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Culture John Zorn Talks Music, Mysticism and the Messiah as He Turns 60
John Zorn’s East Village apartment is like his music: an exceptionally-concentrated, perfectl- composed space celebrating the artistic experience. Thousands of records and tapes and CDs and books, well-ordered, each tug at the visitor’s elbow for attention. For many years, John Zorn — composer, performer, arranger, independent music distributor — has been a major voice in…
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Opinion Pope John Paul II’s Divided Loyalties to Jews
The Vatican has recently announced that two popes who were pioneers in Christian-Jewish relations — John XXIII and John Paul II — are leading candidates for canonization as saints in the Roman Catholic Church. John Paul II was, of course, the pope who followed in the steps of John XXIII in his forthright condemnation of…
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Culture The Evolution of the Relationship Between Catholics and Jews
● From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 By John Connelly Harvard University Press, 384 pages, $35 My definition of Catholic-Jewish relations: an unnatural act engaged in by partially consenting adults — following an opening prayer. This one-liner tells us much that we need to know about the relationships…
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Culture Is Rise of Jewish Fundamentalism Endangering Israeli Democracy?
● The War Within: Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Threat to Democracy and the Nation Yuval Elizur and Lawrence Malkin Overlook Press, 224 pages, $26.95 As my 17-year-old son said, “This book could double as Yair Lapid’s Tanach.” And he’s not wrong. One of the many merits of Yuval Elizur’s and Lawrence Malkin’s “The War Within: Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox…
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Opinion A Possible Pope Goes to Shul
Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, went to shul Shabbat yesterday. Not for the usual davening. Cardinal Dolan, who is considered papabile (a candidate, albeit a very dark-horse candidate, for the papal throne recently vacated by Pope Benedict XVI), immediately captured the standing-room-only crowd in the Manhattan’s Lincoln Square Synagogue by greeting the congregation…
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Culture One Nation Under God
Israel: A History By Anita Shapira Brandeis University Press, 528 pages, $35 Everyone wants to write a “history of Israel” — and many good, and some not so good, historians have done so. Martin Gilbert’s “Israel: A History” (not to be confused with the book we are reviewing here) is excellent for the beginner in…
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