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The Features section of the New Vilna Review is where you can come to read interviews with some of the most interesting leaders in the American Jewish community and from Jewish communities around the globe, as well as essays by authors and scholars on a wide variety of Jewish themes. This section serves to highlight the diversity of opinions and ideas about Jewish identity to be found in Jewish communities.

An Interview with Elise Bernhardt, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture

June 28, 2010

Elise Bernhardt, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, recently took some time to answer a few questions via email about the work of the foundation for the New Vilna Review.

An Interview With Israeli Ornithologist Dr. Yossi Leshem

Junes 21, 2010

Dr. Yossi Leshem is a professor at Tel Aviv University and long-time environmental researcher, educator and activist. Recently he took some time to answer a few questions about his work from the New Vilna Review, via email.

An Interview With Adina Allen and Jeff Kasowitz, Founders of Attar

June 16, 2010

Adina Allen and Jeff Kasowitz founded the organization Attar with the goal of creating innovative programming that combines Jewish texts and traditions with sustainable environmental practices. This past year Jeff Kaskowitz was part of a small group of CJP/Presentense Fellows in Boston who received mentoring and other support as he worked to expand the work of Attar. The two founders recently took some time to answer a few questions from the New Vilna Review via email.

An Interview With Artists4Israel Founder Craig Dershowitz

June 1, 2010

Artist Craig Dershowitz recently took some time to answer a few questions via email from the New Vilna Review about Artists4Israel, an organization devoted to showing the world that there is support for the Jewish State within the arts community. In this interview, Mr. Dershowitz talks about a recent trip to Israel by a group of artists which he organized, how Artists4Israel is working to combat the violent rhetoric of Hamas and what inspired him to use his artistic talents to advocate for Israel.

An Interview with Esther Cohen, Founder of My Israel Wine Tours

May 26, 2010

Esther_Cohen_My_Israel_Wine_Tours

On June 25, 2008, Boston area native Esther Cohen made alyah and moved to Jerusalem to begin her new life as a citizen of Israel. After several years of working in the Jewish community in Boston as an advocate for Israel, the move was a natural one for Cohen. In 2009 she started My Israel Wine Tours, a business dedicated to helping people discover the wines and wineries of Israel. Recently, Esther Cohen took some time to answer a few questions from the New Vilna Review via email from her home in Zichron Yaakov, a major wine producing center along Israel’s Mediterranean coast.

Tisha B’Av at Ground Zero, and keeping Jewish time since

by Bill Miles

May 26, 2010

8th of Av, 5759, at the Kotel. It is now politically incorrect to called it the Wailing Wall, the last extant rampart of the Second Temple where for two thousand years Jews demonstrably lamented the destruction of Jerusalem. For self-conscious modern Zionists, proud of the ’67 recapture of Old Yerushalayam and still a wee bit ashamed of their pious ancestors’ open-air lachrymosity, Western Wall has become the preferred term. But on the annual summer fast day that commemorates the demolition of both Solomon’s Holy Temple and that of the returnees from Babylon, the wail is still in vogue – at least among the ultraorthodox “black hats,” the haredim, who on this day reclaim the Temple Plaza as their own.

Peace Talks Begin Anew, But Tough Times Lie Ahead

by Daniel E. Levenson, ALM

May 21, 2010

The ultimate goal of any peace negotiations should be to create a peace that will be real and lasting. To rush to a solution, out of either frustration or sudden inspiration, is a tack which does not seem likely to succeed in creating a framework for peace and cooperation, between Israel and the Palestinians, which will be able to weather the difficult steps of implementation which are sure to follow a final settlement. Anyone who thinks that a peace solution, once found, will be easy to implement, is either vastly ignorant of the history of the region, or delusional as it is clear that there is bound to be significant resistance from hardliners within both camps who will find any solution, which is not wholly in their own interest, to be objectionable.

An Interview with Or Mars, Director of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program

April 29, 2010

Or Mars recently took some time out of a busy schedule to answer a few questions for the New Vilna Review via email. Before coming to work at the Wexner Foundation in 2006, Mr. Mars held a number of different positions relating to leadership and education in the American Jewish community.

Other: Ashkenazi

by Bill Miles

It’s census time again: are you ready to be visited by the Bureau? Have you ever wondered why the Census Bureau doesn’t want to count us as Jews?

DNA analysis out of Israel not only traces the origins of forty percent of Ashkenazi Jews to just four female ancestors. It also helps threaten a half-century taboo on an exceedingly sensitive notion: that there is such a thing as a Jewish race. Ever since the Nazis employed their pseudo-science to identify and then wage war on the “Jewish race,” bureaucrats and biologists alike, even in America, have been understandably skittish about using the term, lest it be misconstrued or abused.
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Making Space
Part one of a series on Jewish identity

by Daniel E. Levenson, ALM

When I started the New Vilna Review in December of 2007, I did so with the goal of creating a space online where authors, thinkers and artists could explore the ways that Jewish identity is formed and understood in the modern age. I wanted to ask the question, on a large scale, of how Jewish identity is formed and changed by individuals and communities in the early years of the twenty-first century. This is a question I will be returning to in a series of essays that will appear here on the New Vilna Review website, the first of which you are now reading.

• Features Archive

DANIEL E. LEVENSON

Editor in Chief

At the root of faith is a question or many questions perhaps, about the nature of the universe and the meaning of life.

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