Jewish Identity in the light of US antisemitic attacks
These are dark days for the Jewish People. We are facing threats to our physical well-being, but also threats to our understanding of ourselves. We reach out in empathy and…
Podcast 155 – 3rd Elections and Executive Order Angst
Is there a silver lining to holding Knesset elections three times within a year? What was the actual Trump executive order about Jews on campus? Why did it hit such…
Podcast 153 – Antisemitism in the UK
Are things as problematic as they seem to be in the UK? How did Jeremy Corbyn become leader of the Labour party? Why are they accused of (at least) tolerating…
Chapter 10: the Jews of Argentina
With a little under 190,000 Jews, the community in Argentina is the sixth largest Diaspora community in the world. It is also the most troubled. Despite many times of challenge and difficulty, up to the early 1990’s, it was a vibrant and very successful community. But a whole series of events shook up the community and sent it spiraling downhill in a dive from which it has not recovered. Major international Jewish rescue operations are now taking place in Argentina.
Chapter 13: the Jews of Germany
Germany boasts the fastest growing Jewish community in the world. If someone had suggested that as a possibility even twenty years ago, it would have been dismissed as too ridiculous for words. But times have changed, and in the one European country where it seemed certain that no Jew would willingly live a generation after the Holocaust, there are now anything between 100,000 and 180,000 Jews (depending on the criteria for counting the numbers). It is a phenomenon that raises many questions. Let us address them now.
Megilat Esther, Exile, and Zionism – 28
Purim is generally viewed as a particularly happy holiday, characterized by a number of customs designed to make us laugh, to make us “push the envelope” of what is permitted and what is acceptable, in the direction of wild celebration. The story behind the holiday, contained in Megilat Esther, is an entertaining drama, with suspense, irony, sexual innuendo, cartoon violence, and a happy ending. So we read the scroll, but parts we drown out with noise; and we sing, and clown, and masquerade, and party – and move on to the more serious joy of Pesach. This picture is true in the Diaspora as well as in Israel, and part of this unit will look at Purim observance in Israel.
However, it is possible to see in the Esther narrative a darker view of the events, which all the merriment, perhaps, comes to cover up. Perhaps the Purim story can be seen as a dark satire on the Diaspora, as a “Zionist” tract, emphasizing the vulnerability of the Jews when they are not in their own land. Thus, it can give us some insight into the meaning of Exile and the necessity of national sovereignty.
