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  1. jewish identity

Paul Johnson, Philo-Semite

Anti-Semitism, it has often been observed, is remarkably adaptable. Across countless centuries, anti-Semites have targeted Jews because of their wealth and their poverty, their power and their frailty, their piety and their godlessness, their tribalistic chauvinism and their rootless . . . . Continue Reading »

The Rage of Meir Kahane

Meir Kahane: No other name elicits such visceral and varied reactions among Jews today. Born and raised in Brooklyn, ­Rabbi Meir Kahane rose to national prominence in the late 1960s with the founding of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a movement that used radical and often violent means to . . . . Continue Reading »

Calendar as Catechism

The Jewish calendar is the Jewish catechism: So said the -nineteenth-century German champion of Jewish Orthodoxy, Samson R. Hirsch, and with good reason. Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Passover: Despite differences in theology and observance, most Jews, even those who are not well-versed in the entire . . . . Continue Reading »

Anti-Jewish Entertainment

Have you watched the new Netflix drama everyone’s talking about? It’s riveting: It tells the story of Jacob Cohen, a brilliant professor of English literature at an Ivy League university who grows tired of his community’s dogmatic narrow-­mindedness. Sick of being unable to express his ideas . . . . Continue Reading »

A Naive Heretic

The Talmud relates the tragic story of an ancient Jewish sage named Elisha ben Abuyah. Initially one of his generation’s leading rabbinic luminaries, Elisha eventually became ­Judaism’s first unambiguous Epikoros, or theological apostate, earning the sobriquet Akher (“the . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

God’s Supersessionism David Novak (“Supersessionism Hard and Soft,” February) clearly demonstrates the negative consequences of the “hard” supersessionism and the positive benefits of the “soft.” I consider myself a soft supersessionist, meaning that the covenant God made with the Jews . . . . Continue Reading »

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