Features

A Renewable Light Unto the Nations

July 23, 2008

by Yosef Israel Abramowitz 

The convenient truth about the Jewish people is that when we put our minds and capital to work, we can make miracles happen. There is no more noble cause than saving humanity itself, ensuring that God’s covenant not to wipe out the planet with rising waters will be — in some small measure — because of our actions.

Is There an Orthodox War Against Modern Orthodoxy?

Reading Flipping Out? Myth or Fact: The Impact of the "Year in Israel”

June 30, 2008

by Professor Shaul Magid

Indiana University/ Bloomington

Modern Orthodoxy is arguably one of the great success stories of American Jewry in the past forty years. Although it dominated American Orthodoxy before the Second World War, the arrival of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Holocaust survivors coupled with less stringent traditional Jews who migrated toward Conservative Judaism because of its ideology of Americanization after the war resulted in a decline of Modern Orthodoxy in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In the wake of Identity Politics in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, the mainstreaming of multiculturalism, the Baal Teshuva movement and its own strong program of outreach, Modern Orthodoxy made a comeback.¹ Its day-schools flourished as did its summer camps, youth movement (NCSY) and it seemed Modern Orthodoxy had survived the onslaught of its haredi challengers and the defections of its more liberal constituency.

An Interview with AJWS President Ruth Messinger

June 11, 2008

American Jewish World Service President Ruth Messinger recently took some time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions for the New Vilna Review. Ms. Messinger assumed the leadership role of AJWS in 1998 and prior to that she was a member of the New York City Council and served as Manhattan Borough President for eight years.

Continuity vs. Unity

May 28, 2008

by Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz

Maintaining continuity and unity are the two greatest challenges facing the Jewish community.

Jewish unity is slowly disintegrating. Post –Shoah feelings of Jewish solidarity are now gone. Divisions over matters of religion and political affiliation have even lead to violence. Books like A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America and Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry chronicle the growing tensions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews in North America. In Israel, religion has been politicized, with religious and anti-religious parties stoking an atmosphere of mutual contempt. And of course there are the political tensions related to Israel’s foreign policy, which led to the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. With the Jewish people seemingly breaking apart into warring tribes, Jewish unity is a serious problem indeed.

An Interview With Karin Kloosterman, Editor of greenprophet.com

May 27, 2008

Writer and editor Karin Kloosterman recently took some time to answer questions about Green Prophet, a blog that looks at many of the pressing environmental issues facing Israel and the world today.

NVR: What exactly is greenprophet.com and where did the idea for the site come from?

Green Prophet is a blog that reports on environment news from Israel. Although our writers are all based in Israel, and the majority of us are Jewish, the goal (at least mine) is to collect writers from other countries in the region in order to advance cooperation and technology on environmental issues. We'd love to hear Muslim voices from Gaza, Egypt, Jordan or Iraq and learn about the spiritual and "green" sides of Islam. Unfortunately the environment isn't a fashionable topic in Arab countries right now. If climate change predictors are correct, it will be.

From Teenage Romance to Deeper Understanding: The Spiritual Journey of the Omer

May 2008/Nissan 5678

by Mishael Zion

As you wake up to a new day, in the shower, brushing your teeth, you find yourself going over the events of the previous evening again and again. You have only just met, but what a night! There was something special in the air which made not only for a great date, but for what seems now like a life changing experience. That feeling of a real connection to someone, so rare and hard to come by. Last night was magic…

Why I Wash The Dead

April 18, 2008

by Leslie What

The first time I touched a dead man, I was twenty-one, a student nurse on a rotation to ICU, bathing an elderly man whose failed heart required a pacemaker to spark his pulse. He was critically ill, unconscious, sheet pale, with a blue tinge to his lips.

Embracing Our Inner Reverend Wright

April 10, 2008

by David Gottlieb

It's that time of year again -- that time when nothing that's irritating shows signs of going away. It's the endless expiration of the Midwestern winter (even though tomorrow is Opening Day), the sado-voyeuristic pleasure found by the financial press in the mess of our markets, the slow-motion, anarchic implosion of the Iraq War, and the logorrhea of the presidential campaign.

Inscribing Jewish Identity: Reading an Italian Hebrew Sonnet

April 9, 2008

by Cheryl Goldstein

As a “people of the Book” we Jews have often defined ourselves in relation to, and as possessors of, “the Text.” One element in this communal self-fashioning (to tweek Stephen Greenblatt’s phrase), involves, even requires, an ongoing dialogue with language and interpretation where the relationship between the people and the book provides a demonstration of chosen-ness in the interpretative act of choosing. And the community has experienced this status, this chosen-ness, as having a double-edge, as a privilege and a burden, as a force for communal unification and a rationale from both within and outside the Jewish community for separation and cultural distance.

Thoughts on Purim

by Rabbi Avi Poupko

Nachmanadies confirmed, at the great Disputation of Barcelona in 1263, the “accusation” made by the Jewish apostate Pablo Christiani that Jews are, in fact, not the People of the Bible, rather we are the People of the Talmud.

  • Features Archive