How a Tiny Change to Voting Laws Created Israel’s Political Crisis
It’s a basic rule of negotiations: the most strident party is inevitably the one with the upper hand.
October 20, 2022
The Eccentric Canadian Rabbi Who Popularized the Golem Legend and Translated the Zohar
While forging sources and peddling quack cures.
While few today believe that kabbalists ever had the power to create a golem—a humanoid fashioned from clay that would do the bidding of its maker—many are familiar with the story that the 16th-century talmudist Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (a/k/a the Maharal) created a golem to defend the Jews of Prague against anti-Semitic attacks. The legend has even become popular in the modern-day Czech Republic. But, although the outlines of the legend can be traced to medieval Jewish works, and even to the Talmud itself, the association of the golem with Judah Loew seems to have originated in 1909 with the Polish-Canadian rabbi Yudel Rosenberg. Allan Nadler reviews a new study of this colorful figure:
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Login or SubscribeOctober 20, 2022
To Build on the Abraham Accords, Look to Southeast Asia
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The U.S. Shouldn’t Be Sheltering Former Iranian Officials
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In America, Jewish Studies Suffers from a De-Judaization of Scholarship and Disavowal of National Particularism
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The Eccentric Canadian Rabbi Who Popularized the Golem Legend and Translated the Zohar
While forging sources and peddling quack cures.