Postcards From the Dreyfus Affair
In January 1895, Alfred Dreyfus was demoted from his rank of Captain in the French army after he was accused of spying for Germany. The Dreyfus Affair, as it came to be known, unleashed a wave of...
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Blacks and Jews Entangled
In her 1991 memoir, Deborah, Golda, and Me, Letty Cottin Pogrebin argued that black-Jewish relationships rested on a common history of oppression. “Both blacks and Jews have known Egypt,” she wrote....
View ArticleJewish Feminist Leaders
As a child, I thought all feminists were Jewish women. (I also thought all Jewish women were feminists, but that’s another story.) From an early age, I learned from my feminist mother about Betty...
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Bella Abzug
Excerpted with permission from the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA). For more information on Bella Abzug, go to JWA’s Women of Valor online exhibit. “Sometimes I’m asked when I became a feminist, and I...
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Betty Friedan
Reprinted with permission from the JTA. She was, like most ordinary mortals, a mass of contradictions.Betty Friedan (1921-2006) was loud and sometimes imperious, yet she could be charming, funny,...
View ArticleMoses Sofer
Moses Schreiber, also known as Moses Sofer and the Chassam Sofer, was an Austro-Hungarian rabbi who was born in 1763 and died in 1839. Schreiber rose to prominence at age 13, when he began delivering...
View ArticleThe Bar Kochba Revolt
The debacle of the first revolt against Rome was followed by a period of relative calm. Yet during the years of rule by the autonomous Hillelite patriarchs and the leaders of the tannaitic academies,...
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Jerusalem Contested
From Jewish to Roman to Muslim to Christian to Ottoman In 70 C.E. the city of Jerusalem (and the Temple) was destroyed by the Romans, ending Jewish sovereignty for almost two millennia. Jerusalem...
View ArticleRay Frank
Born in San Francisco on April 10, 1861, Rachel (“Ray”) Frank was the daughter of Polish immigrants, Bernard and Leah Frank, whom Ray later described as “Orthodox Jews of liberal mind.” Her father, a...
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Lillian Wald
Lillian Wald is celebrated for her tireless efforts in improving the Lower-East Side immigrant communities. At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of Eastern-European Jews populated crowded,...
View ArticleHannah Greenebaum Solomon
Excerpted with permission from the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA). For more information on Hannah Greenebaum Solomon, go to JWA’s Women of Valor online exhibit. Hannah Greenebaum Solomon was born on...
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Soviet Jewry
Defining the exact start of a Zionist movement in the Soviet Union is difficult. To some extent, there were always Jewish standard-bearers, even in the darkest years when, following the birth of Israel...
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The Sinai Campaign
In the final days of October 1956, Britain, France, and Israel, in a coordinated military and diplomatic campaign, invaded Egypt. The Suez War, as it came to be known, was triggered by Egyptian...
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Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt is perhaps most famous for coining the commonly misunderstood but oft-repeated phrase “the banality of evil,” which sought to make sense of Nazi Adolph Eichmann’s actions during the...
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Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin’s life and work is difficult to categorize. A Renaissance man of letters, he wrote on topics ranging from art history and aesthetics to linguistics, politics, and psychedelic drugs. An...
View ArticleJewish Pioneer Women
Within five years of the start of the Gold Rush in 1848, more than 5,000 Jews migrated to California in search of opportunity, joining members of other religious and ethnic groups. After 1858, with...
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The Twin Wars
The Six Day War was a watershed event in Israel’s history that fundamentally shaped the country’s collective psyche. Forty years later, however, the war’s impact must be understood in light of an...
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Who Was Anne Frank?
Published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, the wartime journal of Anne Frank has become one of the world’s most widely read books, transforming its author into a symbol for the lost...
View ArticleLaw of Return 5710/1950
The Law of Return officially entitles all Jews to immigrate to Israel and become citizens of the state. Immigration to Israel is known in Hebrew as aliyah, and the immigrant is called an oleh. 1. Every...
View ArticleSix Arguments for Jewish Peoplehood
“Do not separate yourself from the community.” It’s hard to imagine that this succinct, 2000-year-old piece of advice from Rabbi Hillel the Elder has ever been more challenging than it is for modern...
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