49 | Tishrei 5780 | October 2019
49 - The Price of Dissent // Moti Benmelech Uriel da Costa paid many times over for the changes he made in his life. He sacrificed a comfortable livelihood in Portugal for the true faith he found in...
כותב
48 | Tammuz 5779 | July 2019
48 - The Dark Hours // Anat Kutner Though sleep and sex are hardly the stuff of history, a surprising amount can be gleaned from rabbinic responsa dealing with medieval Jewish sleeping habits. With candlelight...
The Book of Exodus: A Biography
What can Princeton University’s Lives of Great Religious Books series possibly add to the reams already written on the enormous religious and political influence of the book of Exodus, particularly Michael Walzer’s classic Exodus and...
Shmuel Zanwil Kahane’s Map of Holy Sites
The Rock of Destruction Location: Jerusalem Hills Near Eshtaol and Zor’a, atop a barren, stony hill along the road to Jerusalem, a lone rock juts out. Here, according to a legend recorded in the early...
Curator or Creator
Nowhere to Go In 1950, Jerusalem gained a new pilgrimage site: the Lion’s Cave, located in the Muslim graveyard of the city’s Mamilla neighborhood. The man responsible for this innovation was the director of Israel’s...
Shmuel Zanwil Kahane and the Legend of the Holy Ashes
The Curator's Vision Shmuel Zanwil Kahane, director of Israel's Ministry of Religious Affairs from 1949 to 1979, possessed a keen sense of history. Enormous changes had overtaken the Jewish people, demanding a narrative beyond the...
The Price of Dissent
Amsterdam, Holland’s greatest city, epitomizes liberalism and freedom. The famous coffee shops of the De Wallen neighborhood, the red-light district, the free-flowing alcohol at the many breweries, and the general “anything goes” atmosphere attract millions...
Messianic Mania
When I had attained the age of 20, I began to study the Zohar and the Lurianic writings. [According to the Talmud] whoever wants to purify himself receives the aid of Heaven; and thus He...
Divinely Plagued
Seldom can any individual distill the defining events of his sojourn in this world into a single sentence. Yet sometimes a few words from a familiar, seminal text can evoke just such a sense of...
38 | Tammuz 5777 | July 2017
38 Lonely Man of Honor // Yemima Hovav Ultimate visionary and despicable rival, forged in his native Odessa but focused on the Promised Land, Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky was unique – and an outsider – among...
39 | Tishrei 5778 | Sept 2017
39 Through Lions' Gate // Yagil Henkin Why was the 1967 battle for Jerusalem so different from the way it was planned? Was the heroic capture of Ammunition Hill unnecessary? And why did General Uzi...
