What is the use of Zionism? To restore our pride as Jews, comes the ready answer. Now just when did we lose this precious pride? Could it be that, without the State of Israel, Zionists might be ashamed of being Jews? And how can one be proud of a country that drops white phosphorous bombs on defenseless civilians? Instead of combating anti-Semitism, Zionism cultivates it. An essential dogma of this new creed is that anti-Semitism is immutable and permanent. Zionists claim that we are still in 1938, and that a new Holocaust is in the offi ng. Every passing year becomes a year of broken glass. So we must rally around the State of Israel, which alone can save us. A fear-based religion allows Jewish leaders in the Diaspora to retain power over their flock. To free themselves from such blackmail, to break out of the vicious Auschwitz-Israel circle, Jews have only to disconnect from Zionism and take up their historic vocation: explaining Torah to the nations. But first, they will have to understand it themselves. Haim Ben-Asher is a historian.
King of Israel? Poor Jesus. Had he remained in Nazareth working in Joseph's carpentry shop, he would have been offered a share of the business. He could have settled down, married a nice Jewish girl and enjoyed a happy home life with his wife and children. He would not have gone to Jerusalem, and he would not have been crucified by the Romans. Instead, he got carried away by his success as a faith healer and imagined himself to be the King of Israel. The Pharisees had serious doubts regarding his candidacy to the throne of David. Miracles in themselves prove nothing; multiplying loaves of bread and walking on water did not bring the kingdom of heaven any nearer. So they warned Jesus not to go to Jerusalem. But he disregarded their advice and undertook to make the long journey on foot, performing miracle cures along the way. Jesus received a rapturous welcome on his arrival, as the people lining his route shouted, "Hosanna to the son of David!" Five days later, he was dead. What happened in the interval, and why did his popular following vanish almost completely? For one thing, his fellow Jews reasoned that anyone who recommends paying taxes to Rome cannot possibly be their liberator. But there were other, more profound reasons for this disaffection. Much of Jesus' teaching runs counter to Judaism and its approach to life. Loving one's enemies and hating one's parents simply will not do. The present essay offers an explanation of the Jewish world-view so as to disentangle fact from fiction in the New Testament.
What is the use of Zionism? To restore our pride as Jews, comes the ready answer. Now just when did we lose this precious pride? Could it be that, without the State of Israel, Zionists might be ashamed of being Jews? And how can one be proud of a country that drops white phosphorous bombs on defenseless civilians? Instead of combating anti-Semitism, Zionism cultivates it. An essential dogma of this new creed is that anti-Semitism is immutable and permanent. Zionists claim that we are still in 1938, and that a new Holocaust is in the offi ng. Every passing year becomes a year of broken glass. So we must rally around the State of Israel, which alone can save us. A fear-based religion allows Jewish leaders in the Diaspora to retain power over their flock. To free themselves from such blackmail, to break out of the vicious Auschwitz-Israel circle, Jews have only to disconnect from Zionism and take up their historic vocation: explaining Torah to the nations. But first, they will have to understand it themselves. Haim Ben-Asher is a historian.
King of Israel? Poor Jesus. Had he remained in Nazareth working in Joseph's carpentry shop, he would have been offered a share of the business. He could have settled down, married a nice Jewish girl and enjoyed a happy home life with his wife and children. He would not have gone to Jerusalem, and he would not have been crucified by the Romans. Instead, he got carried away by his success as a faith healer and imagined himself to be the King of Israel. The Pharisees had serious doubts regarding his candidacy to the throne of David. Miracles in themselves prove nothing; multiplying loaves of bread and walking on water did not bring the kingdom of heaven any nearer. So they warned Jesus not to go to Jerusalem. But he disregarded their advice and undertook to make the long journey on foot, performing miracle cures along the way. Jesus received a rapturous welcome on his arrival, as the people lining his route shouted, "Hosanna to the son of David!" Five days later, he was dead. What happened in the interval, and why did his popular following vanish almost completely? For one thing, his fellow Jews reasoned that anyone who recommends paying taxes to Rome cannot possibly be their liberator. But there were other, more profound reasons for this disaffection. Much of Jesus' teaching runs counter to Judaism and its approach to life. Loving one's enemies and hating one's parents simply will not do. The present essay offers an explanation of the Jewish world-view so as to disentangle fact from fiction in the New Testament.
A collection of 18 articles, most of them dealing with the Jews of medieval Spain and Portugal, an area of Jewish history in which Prof. Beinart is a world-renowned expert. Eight of the articles are in English, seven in Spanish, and three in French. Among the articles are: Hope against Hope -- Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages (David B Ruderman); Daniel Rodriga and the First Decade of the Jewish Merchants of Venice (Benjamin Ravid); Mr Pepys' Contacts with the Spanish and Portugese Jews of London (Richard D Barnett).
When first published in 1979, Haim Be'er's Feathers was a critical and commercial success, ushering in a period of great productivity and expansiveness in modern Hebrew literature. Now considered a classic in Israeli fiction the book is finally available to English readers worldwide. In this, his first novel, Be'er portrays the world of a deeply religious community in Jerusalem during the author's childhood and adolescence in the 1950s and 60s. The novel is filled with vivid portraits of eccentric Jerusalem characters, chief among them the book's main character, Mordecai Leder, who dreams of founding a utopian colony based on the theories of the nineteenth-century Viennese Jewish thinker Karl Popper-Lynkeus. Similar high-flying dreams inspire the family of the narrator, strict Orthodox Jews with impractical minds and adventurous souls--men such as the narrator's father, who periodically disappears from home on botanical expeditions meant to prove that the willow tree of Scripture is in fact the Australian eucalyptus. Experimental in structure and mood, Feathers features kaleidoscopic jumps in time, back and forth in the narrator's memories from boyhood to adulthood. Its moods swing wildly from hilarity to the macabre, from familial warmth to the loneliness of adolescence. Jerusalem and its inhabitants, as well as the emotional life of the narrator, are splintered and reconstituted, shattered and patched. This fragmentation, combined with a preoccupation with death and physical dissolution and dreamlike flights of imagination, evokes an Israeli magical realism. Feathers was chosen one of the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by the National Yiddish Book Center.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.