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Zora Neale Hurston.

Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on January 13, 2025
Still from a "Between the Temples," showing a man and woman lying opposite each other.

How Resilient Are Jewish American Traditions?

"Between the Temples" tackles the anxieties around cultural assimilation—and finds continuity among very different generations.
by Mark Asch via The Atlantic on August 30, 2024

The Fight for the Sabbath

The partnership between rabbis and labor that delivered the two-day weekend.
by Avi Garelick via Jewish Currents on February 21, 2023
Ancient language symbols or hieroglyphics

Collecting for Salvation: American Antiquarianism and the Natural History of the East

The outlines of “salvation antiquarianism”—with the emphasis on “saving”—appears particularly clearly in the AAS’s inaugural 1813 address.
by Christen Mucher via Commonplace on October 26, 2022
Black-and-white photograph of Jacob Schiff, banker and philanthropist, from a side profile

The Sanitizing of Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism’s origins lie in a donor plan to neutralize and refine the radical Jewish immigrant masses.
by Allen Lipson via Jewish Currents on October 19, 2022
Crowd at 2015 Purim Ball in New York City

How New York's 19th-Century Jews Turned Purim Into an American Party

In the 19th century, Purim became an occasion to hold parties to raise money for charities. These parties helped American Jews gain a standing among the elite.
by Zev Eleff via The Conversation on February 23, 2021
A painting depicting pilgrims arriving in the New World.

Exodus: Vaera

For Freud, “chosenness” was a psychopathological fantasy in need of explanation.
by Len Gutkin via Jewish Currents on April 30, 2020

The Right’s “Judeo-Christian” Fixation

How a term that sounds inclusive is used to promote exclusion.
by Udi Greenberg via The New Republic on November 14, 2019

Writing Jewish History

Histories of the Jews reveal a lot about the times in which they were written.
by Adam Kirsch via The New Yorker on March 26, 2018
Still from Dirty Dancing.

In the Dark All Katz Are Grey: Notes on Jewish Nostalgia

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and contradictory and all mine.
by Samuel Ashworth via Hazlitt on February 23, 2018
Two bridges in Grand Island, New York.

Almost Zion: Remembering a Short-lived Jewish State in New York

Ararat, a settlement dreamed up in the 1800s, was meant to offer a refuge to Jews. But after an ornate ceremony, plans never got off the ground.
by Adam L. Rovner via The Conversation on April 29, 2025
A drawing of cannons being fired at Fort Sumter.

What Can We Learn From the Jewish Debate Over Slavery?

This Passover, American Jews should embrace the fight for “emancipation of all kinds.”
by Richard Kreitner via Slate on April 10, 2025
Henrietta Szold welcoming Jewish refugees from Poland to Palestine, February 1943.

Henrietta Szold & the Return to Zion

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her ’cultural’ Zionism for Jewish Americans today?
by Nicholas Lemann via New York Review of Books on February 20, 2025

The Political Force Behind Zionism

A new book traces the rise of the Israel lobby and the challenges it has faced as global criticism of Israel has intensified.
by Ted Steinberg via Jacobin on January 27, 2025
Stamp commemorating "Contributors To The Cause... Haym Salomon, Financial Hero."

Dusting Off the Old Stories

What does the Jewish experience in the Revolutionary War say about America?
by Richard Kreitner via Jewish Review of Books on January 15, 2025
Paintings by John Singer Sargent: Asher Wertheimer, 1898 (left) and Hylda, Almina and Conway, Children of Asher Wertheimer, 1905 (center), London. Portrait of Mrs. Asher B. Wertheimer, 1898 (right).

A Sudden, Revealing Searchlight

On Jean Strouse and the art of biography.
by Ruth Franklin via Harper’s on October 23, 2024
Mary Baker Eddy and a church.

Christian Science as Jewish Tradition

Why did so many American Jewish women find Christian Science appealing?
by Noah Berlatsky via The Revealer on June 11, 2024
A JDL ad from the New York Times.

False Prophet

Meir Kahane's legacy in Israel and America.
by John Ganz via Unpopular Front on May 10, 2024
A drawing of a television screen between the fingers of someone framing an image of barbed wire.

The Problem With TV's New Holocaust Obsession

From 'The Tattooist of Auschwitz' to 'We Were the Lucky Ones,' a new wave of Holocaust dramas feel surprisingly shallow.
by Judy Berman via TIME on May 8, 2024
A drawing of Magneto wearing a kippah over his helmet.

The Judgment Of Magneto

From villain to antihero, nationalist to freedom fighter, the comic book character has always been a reflection of the Jewish cultural identity.
by Asher Elbein via Defector on April 24, 2024
A presidential portrait of George Washington.

The Enduring Power of Purim

Since colonial times, the Book of Esther has proved a powerful metaphor in American politics.
by Stuart Halpern via Tablet on March 21, 2024
Vice President Joe Biden visits Israel on January 13, 2014.

The Shoah After Gaza

Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis are the foundation on which most descriptions of extreme ideology and atrocity have been built.
by Pankaj Mishra via London Review of Books on March 21, 2024
American and Israeli Jews protest outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's New York hotel in support of democracy for all in Israel-Palestine, September 19, 2023.

The Forgotten History of American Jewish Dissent Against Zionism

In resurrecting stories of non- and anti-Zionist critics, a new book shows American Jews how questioning Israel is deeply rooted in their community.
by Shaul Magid via +972 Magazine on February 14, 2024
A collage of Meir Kahane, a pistol, and the outline of Israel and Palestine on a yellow background.

The American Origins of Israel’s Armament Campaign

How Kahanism infiltrated the political mainstream.
by Rafi Reznik via The Dial on December 5, 2023
Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

How Christianity Influenced America’s Notions of Equality

'All men are created equal' coexisted with the understanding that not all were meant to be treated equally in life.
by Darrin M. McMahon via TIME on November 15, 2023
John Trumbull's painting of Alexander Hamilton, 1806 (National Portrait Gallery).

Founding Philosemitism

Alexander Hamilton always believed that the providential protection that kept the small Jewish world alive would embrace his own extraordinary nation.
by Juliana Geran Pilon via Law & Liberty on October 3, 2023
A drawing of a woman looking inside the door of a church where children are playing.

The Quiet Revolution of the Sabbath

Requiring rest, rather than work, is still a radical idea.
by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on September 30, 2023
Jewish headstones in an abandoned graveyard in North Dakota.

In North Dakota, Endless Sky, A Few Gravestones, and the Remnants Of A Little-Known Jewish History

While most Jewish immigrants flocked to urban centers, a few -- like the Greenbergs -- tried their luck as homesteaders.
by Robert Zaretsky via Forward on August 21, 2023
The Jewish Catalog

When Judaism Went à la Carte

On the 50th anniversary of "The Jewish Catalog."
by Jane Eisner via The Atlantic on July 28, 2023
Black and white illustration of immigrants on a boat sailing into the harbor next to the Statue of Liberty.

How Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe Were Introduced to Whiteness

That status has been taken as obvious, then questioned, then reasserted over the decades.
by Emily Tamkin via Literary Hub on November 3, 2022
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