• Sara Hurwitz, the first female Orthodox rabbi—or “rabba”—has become the center of a growing schism over women’s roles in the movement. [WSJ]
• Move over Mamma Mia! A school for religious musicians will open in Israel and is already considering a “rock opera based on the life story of Rabbi Nachman from Breslev.” [Ynet]
• The ...

We know that even having learned about the Holocaust as a kid can alter one’s conception of reality, a factor compounded all the more for children of survivors. What we didn’t know is that such lingering trauma might help you get off for tax evasion. Jack Barouh, 65, the former proprietor of a watch company, ...

Yesterday, as a guest on a conservative Jewish radio program called the Nachum Segal Show, Senator Chuck Schumer, whom Politico calls “a hawkish ally of Israel” became the “highest-ranking Democrat” to boldly speak out against President Obama’s Israel policy of late, saying: “This has to stop.” Schumer made it clear that he opposes the tactic ...

Have you ever found yourself in Atlantic City, a bagful of saltwater taffy in hand, wishing there was someplace more somber to visit than Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum? If so, then this one’s for you: a group of locals are busy planning a Holocaust museum to be placed right smack on the main ...

Writing in The American Interest, Walter Russell Mead calls attention to a much overlooked alliance that is dramatically affecting the political landscape. “Americans often talk about Israel as if we were the Jewish state’s only real friend,” writes Mead. In actuality, a 2009 survey demonstrated that in India—which has the “third-largest number of Muslims in ...

Congratulations to Tablet contributor Adam Kirsch, winner of the 2010 Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism, a new award named for a celebrated Proust scholar and founding member of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. In his books column, Kirsch has been providing our readers with brilliant and probing coverage of volumes on topics as ...

• U.S. envoy George Mitchell has arrived in Israel and met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and is also set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. “We don’t go to meet just to meet,” says a U.S. rep. “We go there because we have some indication that both sides ...

• Richard Goldstone responds to an article in which South Africa’s chief rabbi Warren Goldstein wrote that he believes the judge should be able to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah despite the fact that “he has done so much wrong in the world,” saying: “I was dismayed that the chief rabbi would so brazenly politicise ...

A step up from “pull my finger.”

Although, as Liel Liebovitz wrote in his article on Hitler as internet meme (a phenomenon that may be a thing of the past, as the production company behind Downfall, the much-spoofed film that sparked the trend, has filed copyright claims and removed most videos from YouTube), “we know—we feel!—that there could never really be another ...