Nothing New Under the Sun
Elliot N. Dorff argues that numbers don’t dictate the strength of a movement, the power of its ideas do.
The Problem Is Not Ideological
Noah Benjamin Bickart of The Jewish Theological Seminary teaches Jews who are passionate about “an egalitarian, halakhic, yet non-fundamentalist Judaism,“ even though they may not call themselves Conservative Jews.
A Movement Strikes Back
Seven leaders and a historian respond to Daniel Gordis’ “Requiem for a Movement.”
Bambi’s Jewish Roots
Felix Salten was a hack who cultivated ties to the Habsburg court and wrote the bestselling memoir of a fictional prostitute. He was also a charismatic Zionist who outshone Buber on the stage and—not so coincidentally—wrote Bambi
Conservative Judaism: A Requiem
In 1971, 41 percent of American Jews were part of the Conservative movement. Today it's 18 percent and falling fast. What happened? Maybe its leaders never knew what Conservative Judaism was really about.
Forget Remembering
Rutu Modan’s graphic novel The Property explores the uneasy coexistence of love and death.
Hollywood and the Nazis
In their dealings with Germany in the 1930s, were Hollywood’s moguls just watching the bottom line or aiding the Third Reich’s PR machine?
Hollywood’s Anti-Nazi Spies
In 1934, Hollywood's Jewish moguls met secretly at the Hillcrest Country Club to hear an unusual pitch: find Nazis in America, and stop them.
Kafka at Bedtime
Kafka continues to interest everyone from academics to Hasidic slam poets.
Kashrut and Kugel: Franz Rosenzweig’s “The Builders”
In 1923, Franz Rosenzweig wrote an open letter to Martin Buber on being bound by Jewish law in the modern age. Interestingly, he was just as concerned with minhag (custom) as halakha.