The Center for Online Judaic Studies, which is being run out of NYU, has posted its first educational resource guides (on Jewish-American history, prepared my good friend David Koffman, and women in Jewish History, prepared by Shira Kohn).
The guides include some great images, as well as an outlines with info and classroom activities for teachers […]

Props to JTA for pointing out Rabbi Marc Angel’s scathing critique of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate in the Jerusalem Post. The rant includes these harsh words.
THE CHIEF Rabbinate functions as though it were leading a cult rather than a world religion with a grand, universal message. It adopts extreme haredi positions and attitudes because it […]

Are you in the know? Introducing the MJL Jewish news roundup, featuring important, interesting, and informative stories from around the Jewish world.

Yehoshua Engleman says, “Hearing even a single note of Godly music can make people stop appreciating human voices, for they know that nothing can ever compare. One is left with the shame of […]

From the Jewish Publication Society:
JEWISH BIBLIOGRAPHIES FROM AJL AND JPS
The Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) and the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) have partnered to distribute bibliographies highlighting great Jewish books. The lists “A Year of Celebrations,” “Creating a Collection,” and “Jewish Classics for Kids” were created by AJL member librarians who are respected experts in […]

Become an AJWS World Partners Fellow
AJWS World Partners Fellowship is awarded to Jewish recent college graduates and young professionals who wish to volunteer at a non-governmental organization (NGO), live independently in a developing country and participate in a peer-learning community. Fellows learn about human rights in an international context, explore the Jewish values that […]

Tova Reich’s novel My Holocaust has been rapturously praised by most critics, but as I mentioned here and elsewhere I was bitterly disappointed by it. And now I have some company.
Writing in the New York Times Book Review this weekend, David Margolick was similarly disturbed by Reich’s wayward satire.
Sure, it can seem that ghoulish Holocaust […]

Haaretz reports:
In the Internet and digital information age, few publishers are willing to take on major publishing projects, like new encyclopedias. Thus, it is surprising to note the recent release of a highly ambitious project, conceived six years ago, that required the investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars: A five-volume encyclopedia entitled, “New Jewish […]

Our partner, JBooks.com, and our friends at the Center for Cultural Judaism have launched a new secular Jewish online journal called Secular Culture and Ideas. From the press release:
There are more secular Americans than ever before, and nowhere is the trend more pronounced than among Jewish Americans, nearly half of whom consider themselves secular or somewhat […]

Yesterday I mentioned Gidi Grinstein’s suggestion that many of Israel’s problems are rooted in the instability of its government.
Here’s the idea in his own words:

The Prime Minister’s National Economic Council has recently presented an ambitious plan titled “Socio-Economic Agenda for Israel 2008-2010″. As appropriate, the media highlighted the objective of reducing the number of households […]

I just got back from a lunchtime speech given by Gidi Grinstein, President of the Reut Institute (”an innovative policy group designed to provide real-time long-term strategic decision-support to the Government of Israel’).
Ostensibly, the topic of conversation was Israel-Diaspora relations, and while Grinstein suggested several new measures (most notably, asking American donors to demand transparency […]