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Awakening from Despair – Yosef Haim Brenner

Amit Assis

Yosef Haim Brenner’s stories are steeped in his own experiences. Deeply troubled by the Jewish people’s desperate state, he saw no solution in the land of Israel yet spoke up for it heroically. In life,...

20th centuryArticlesIssue 69 | June 2024Land of IsraelLiterature and CultureZionism

From Temple to Talmud – Post-Temple Judaism

Yair Furstenberg

Rabbinic Judaism is often described as having developed in reaction to the loss of the Temple and its sacrificial ritual. Certainly, the sages of the period were responding to some kind of crisis. But was...

AntiquityArticlesIssue 69 | June 2024JerusalemLand of IsraelReligions

Salonika’s Mystic Quartet – Kabbalists in Salonika

Roee Horen

As one of the Ottoman Empire’s few Mediterranean ports, Salonika welcomed Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal. Four great mystics emerged from its shores – each with a different approach to redeeming the Jewish people...

ArticlesIssue 51 | February 2020

The Jewish American Secret Police

Hadassah Assouline

A Jewish community organization in New York dealt with myriad issues, even creating an internal police force to deal with rising crime Hadassah Assouline In early September 1908, the chief of the New York City...

20th centuryAmerican JewsColumnsIssue 11 | July 2012New YorkPeople

The Best Defense – Ben-Gurion

Yagil Henkin

Ben-Gurion could never have declared a state in May 1948 without first painstakingly transforming Palestine’s ragtag Jewish militias into an army Yagil Henkin What was David Ben-Gurion’s most significant accomplishment? Most people would probably choose...

ArticlesIssue 16 | April-May 2013

Strength in Numbers

Jeffrey S. Gurock

In New York circa 1900, Jewish identity was in the streets and in the air; one in four New Yorkers was Jewish, and formal religious affiliation felt unnecessary. Fifty years later, suburban Jews needed communal...

20th centuryAmerican JewsArticlesIssue 11 | July 2012New York

Jewish as Can Be

Rachel Gordan

Are New York’s Jews opting for more Judaism or less? Is their Jewishness nothing more than bagels and lox, or is the growing visibility of ultra- Orthodox communities an indication of future trends? Rachel Gordan...

American JewsArticlesIssue 11 | July 2012New YorkPost-1948

No Business Like Show Business

Yuval Rivlin

Broadway was a springboard to integration for talented Jewish arrivals from Europe, yet their musicals’ immigrant themes are unmistakable Yuval Rivlin When asked to define modern Jewish identity, Sigmund Freud often responded with a story....

20th centuryAmerican JewsArticlesIssue 11 | July 2012New York

Ticket to Riches

Rebecca Kobrin

The waves of migration from eastern Europe did not simply ebb and flow. Orchestrated by the entrepreneurial spirit of the likes of Sender Jarmulowsky, they created surges of capital. The trade in ship tickets changed...

20th centuryArticlesIssue 11 | July 2012New YorkPeople

My Son, the Gangster

Robert Rockaway

New York’s Jewish gangsters lived fast and furious. Exploiting the criminal opportunities created by Prohibition, they masterminded a network of crime that spread far beyond New York and earned their fellow Jews’ scorn – and...

20th centuryAmerican JewsArticlesIssue 11 | July 2012New YorkPeople

Scent of Freedom

Tamar HaYardeni

Pipe Dreams The average tourist would definitely wrinkle his nose in disgust and pity at the row of old women beaming from the photo of the Russian Compound’s pilgrim hostel in turn-of-the-century Jerusalem. The subjects...

ColumnsIndependence Day|Tale of a TrailIssue 32 | June 2016

Issues

Awakening from Despair – Yosef Haim Brenner

From Temple to Talmud – Post-Temple Judaism