A three-alarm fire that destroyed a historic synagogue in New Jersey appears to be accidental after a preliminary investigation. The fire on Friday at the Polie Zedek synagogue in New Brunswick, New Jersey, left only the shell of the building and destroyed everything inside, according to local reports. One of the Torah scrolls was saved…
● The Third Reich in History and Memory By Richard J. Evans Oxford University Press, 496 pages, $29.95 However deranged his deeds, Adolf Hitler was not certifiably mad. The German people did not voluntarily embrace the dictator, but acquiesced in his rule only after a campaign of terror that silenced or sidelined the political opposition….
I teach Jewish history in North Carolina, a land haunted by Jesus Christ. It is a land where the present is the biblical past. It is a land where the Second Coming is apparently coming any moment now. It is a land where devout Christians are eager to share the good news. It is a…
British historian Sir Martin Gilbert, who studied the Holocaust and was the official biographer of Winston Churchill, has died. Gilbert died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 78. Gilbert, the author of 80 books, wrote on the subjects of the Holocaust, World War I and World War II, and Jewish history. Among his books…
At Shuly Wigs in Boro Park, Brooklyn / Martyna Starosta The sole purpose of Taxonomy of the Sheitel was to inform you, dear perplexed reader, of the various Orthodox wigs and what each signifies. The intention was not to opine on the reasoning behind wigs and its relevance today. However, as was expressed in the…
Sometimes history is so absurd that it’s funny. “This Land is Mine,” an animated short film about the history of Israel by cartoonist and animator Nina Paley, has resurfaced in the wake of the latest war in Gaza. The short displays all of the tribes, empires, and countries that have claimed the region at some…
Some years ago, a career military person told me that when the first intifada broke out, in 1987, there had been no indication of the impending uprising. A simple traffic accident sparked rioting that spread, while the military, and indeed Israeli society, was caught by surprise. I ventured that after 20 years of holding a…
Editor’s Note: As part of the Forward’s Our Promised Lands project, which will cover 50 states in 50 weeks, Anne Cohen and Sigal Samuel are setting out on a Southern adventure. Over the next eight days, they will travel to Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, so keep an eye on this blog to follow their…
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