Judaism articles from January 1999

Judaism archives from January 1999

Reclaiming Zionism.
January 1, 1999... Where were you when I laid the foundations of this land? Declare if you have understanding...who laid its cornerstone?--Job 38:4-5 MY ELDEST SON, OREN, AND MY FATHER, GERSHON, DIED a mere six years apart and are buried not far from one...

Jerusalem Bride.(Poem)
January 1, 1999... Cloud saturated sunset Inscribed by time. Rain washed. Throwing off her veil This city reflected by time. Rose blossom blushed. Young stones sang out "Jerusalem." LEORA B. SMITH, whose poems appeared in...

The Ten Plagues and Statistical Science as a Way of Knowing.
January 1, 1999... The Plagues AS THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ISRAELITES' EXODUS from Egypt unfolds, the meanings of the "strong hand and outstretched arm" of God become manifest through the vehicle of the ten plagues: Blood fills the River Nile (Exodus...

"Meteor-Yid": Abba Kovner's Poetic Confrontation with Jewish History.
January 1, 1999... WHEN THE POET ABBA KOVNER CALLS HIMSELF "meteor-Yid," he claims for himself a complex identity. The enigmatic natural phenomenon, its brilliance, its heavenly source, its effect on the universe and its precarious existence are but a few of the...

Primo Levi, Witness.
January 1, 1999... Primo Levi's If This is a Man and Responses to the Lager in Italy 1945-47 AFTER ELEVEN MONTHS IN AUSCHWITZ-MONOWITZ AND TEN months wandering through war-torn central Europe, Prima Levi returned to Turin in October 1945. On his journey home...

The Ethical Uncertainty of Prima Levi.
January 1, 1999... PRIMO LEVI IS TOO EASILY THOUGHT OF MERELY AS THE dispassionate, "scientific investigator" who writes about his time in Auschwitz, in the various phrases of Cynthia Ozick, with "lucid calm" or "magisterial equanimity" or "unaroused...

Primo Levi's Hybrid Texts.
January 1, 1999... IN THE PERIODIC TABLE PRIMO LEVI POINTS OUT THE WAY IN which the idea and celebration of "impurity" was central to the development of his sense of rebellion against Nazi theory and practice. The Nazis wanted the world to be both abstractly...

Unvarnished Truth: The Chemistry of Shame in Primo Levi.
January 1, 1999... PRIMO LEVI SPENT HIS LIFE IN THE ACTIVE REASSERTION OF the plain truth of his experience in the Lager. When readers and interpreters got it wrong, for whatever reasons, he returned to essential points, and to reaching out so as to draw readers...

Israel Zangwill and Children of the Ghetto.
January 1, 1999... WHEN ISRAEL ZANGWILL'S CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO first appeared in 1892, it created a sensation on two continents and established its author as the preeminent literary voice of Anglo-Jewry. A novel set in the late nineteenth century, Children of...

Apocalyptic for the Millennium.
January 1, 1999... I WAS TAUGHT BY HERMANN COHEN AND MARTIN BUBER, who did not otherwise always agree, that I should beware of Apocalypticism at all costs. Biblical Prophecy, they thought, issued in two streams: Jewish ethics and law on the one hand, and...

The New Rabbi.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Unfinished Rabbi. Selected Writings of ARNOLD JACOB WOLF, with a foreword by Eugene B. Borowitz. Edited by JONATHAN S. WOLF, editor. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998. This is not a how-to book for rabbis. It is the journey of one remarkable soul...

Evocation and Detachment: Two Voices Reflect Upon Polish-Jewish Relations.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Sparks Among the Ashes: Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry. By BYRON L. SHERWIN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust. By MICHAEL C. STEINLAUF. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University...

Before Going to Medical School.(Review)
January 1, 1999... The Jewish Doctor: A Narrative History. By MICHAEL NEVINS. Northvail, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996. When I asked Wendy, my daughter the gastroenterologist, and my son Jon, the cardiologist, how much they knew of the history of Jewish doctors,...

Israel at 50.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine. With text by KATHLEEN STEWARD HOWE and an introduction by NITZA ROSOVSKY. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1997. Jerusalem and the Holy Land Rediscovered: The...

Communications.
January 1, 1999... TO THE EDITOR: In his review "Feminism and Orthodox Judaism" (Judaism, Fall 1998), Joel B. Wolowelsky takes issue with Michael Kaufman, the author of the book Feminism and Judaism: Women, Tradition and the Women's Movement. Wolowelsky...