Salsa and Sociology
When I was a child, eight or nine, I evolved a theory about different kinds of Jews, based, more or less, on the hot sauce we kept on our table.
Scaling the Internet
September 11, 2001 proved Akamai's technology could withstand anything. Cruelly, inventor Danny Lewin was the first to die in the attacks.
Scenes of Jewish Life in Imperial Russia
What was life like in pre-revolutionary Russia? It certainly did not take place in an unchanging shtetl.
The Devil You Know
Alvin H. Rosenfeld in 2013: “How aggressive this new antisemitism is likely to get and, ultimately, how destructive it will be if it proceeds unchecked are open questions.”
Wisdom and Wars
If it were fiction, Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom would be the greatest English war novel.
Hebrew School Days
When I was nineteen, I saw an ad at the UCLA Career Center for a job teaching “Jewish history through drama,” at the Sunday school of a large nearby temple. It was only a couple of hours a week, but it paid maybe four times as much as my job at the Student Store. Needless to say, I hadn’t taught…
A Student-Centered Tradition
In the early 1930s Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira wrote that the most important thing to teach children was that "they themselves are their own educators."
All-American, Post-Everything
Shaul Magid argues that Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is the Rebbe for post-ethnic America. But is cosmotheism a good idea?
Athens or Sparta? A Rejoinder
Accused by Patrick Tyler of unfairness, Morris presses on.
Athens or Sparta? A Response
Patrick Tyler accuses Benny Morris of being unfair in his attacks on Fortress Israel.