Scrolling Through a Mysterious Polish Shtetl

by Zachary Solomon for Jewinverse

Looking to get away but don't want to deal with the logistics of flights, or well, traveling? Luckily for you, you can now transport yourself to an old, mysterious shtetl named Radzyn hidden deep in the forests of Poland, via a brand-new serialized, gorgeously illustrated e-story.

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New Studies, Old Hatreds

Is anti-Semitism just another hatred, or is it unique? A new academic study tries, with mixed results, to answer the question.

By Alex Joffe in Mosaic Magazine

Studying anything having to do with Jews is at once conventional and sedate and potentially perilous. In 2010, a project at Yale University gathered experts from a number of different countries and disciplines to examine the peculiarly modern forms taken by the world’s oldest hatred. The resulting conference, titled “Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity,” included considerations of anti-Semitism in places as disparate as Francoist Spain, Brazil under the Dutch, post-apartheid South Africa, and contemporary settings too numerous to list.

But what drew widespread media attention to the gathering was the treatment of only a single topic, namely, anti-Semitism in the contemporary Islamic world. In fact, the sessions devoted to this phenomenon set off a firestorm of controversy so fierce as to result in the eventual ouster from Yale of the conference organizer, the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA). Although the university’s official reason for shuttering YIISA was the program’s alleged failure “to meet high standards for research and instruction,” there was not the slightest doubt that the real reason lay in the vociferous charges of “anti-Arab extremism and hate-mongering” lodged against the conveners by Arab and pro-Palestinian groups and their faculty supporters. By 2011, YIISA was no more.

Now, the conference proceedings have been published in five slender volumes. They appear under the imprint of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), of which YIISA was originally a project. Headed by the sociologist Charles Asher Small, ISGAP is the largest research unit of its kind in North America; its mission is altogether respectable: to study anti-Semitism “in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework from an array of approaches and perspectives.” Ironically enough, one might say that the very comprehensiveness of ISGAP’s approach—which necessarily mandates the inclusion of Islamic anti-Semitism, today’s single deadliest form of the phenomenon under examination—is what proved YIISA’s undoing. In this respect, publication of the conference volumes affords an opportunity not only to consider the merits of Yale’s conduct but to reflect more generally on the academic study of anti-Semitism today.

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Italian Pentateuch From 1482 Sells For $3.87 Million At Paris Auction

It’s the most expensive Hebrew language book ever sold.

By Elissa Goldstein for Jewcy

An Italian Torah book from 1482 has sold for $3.87 million in Paris, JTA reports. Auction house Christie’s says that the volume “represents the very first appearance in print of all five books of the Pentateuch as well as the first to which vocalization and cantillation marks have been added.” It also contains commentary by the medieval French Torah scholar, Rashi. We’re talking Gutenberg-style status here, folks. This is one of the most rare, valuable Jewish texts of all time.

The sale price—estimated at $2.08 million prior to auction—broke the record for the most expensive Hebrew language book ever sold. Apparently, a fierce ten-minute bidding war broke out between telephone bidders and buyers in the room. No word yet as to whether we’ll get to see it on display in a museum any time soon, but here’s hoping the anonymous buyer is feeling generous.

The Jewish Conductor and the Polish Pope

How two men used music to bridge religious differences and historical hatreds.

By MATTHEW KAMINSKI in Mosaic Magazine
One February day in 1988, Gilbert Levine was summoned to the Vatican's Bronze Gate. "Where is that?" he asked. The Brooklyn-born Jewish conductor had no idea that the Portone di Bronzo was the principal entrance to the Apostolic Palace. He had met his first Catholic priest only months earlier.

At the palace, Pope John Paul II, vigorous at 67, welcomed Mr. Levine to his private library. The pope had asked to meet the American who had recently taken over the philharmonic in Kraków, the Polish pontiff's hometown. This was still the Cold War, and Mr. Levine was the first Westerner to lead a major musical institution in the Soviet sphere. "How are you treating my orchestra?" the pope asked with a twinkle in his eye. Turning serious, "How is my orchestra treating you? You know, maestro, they are not much fun for conductors."

"A crazy conversation ensues," says Mr. Levine, who's now 66, recalling that first meeting. The two men discussed music, Kraków and Mr. Levine's family. The conductor's father's parents emigrated to America from prewar Poland. His mother-in-law survived Auschwitz; some 40 relatives perished in the Holocaust. As a child, Karol Wojtyła had played soccer and gone to school with Jews. He told Mr. Levine that he had lost many close Jewish friends in the war.

"Something came over me in the midst of this," says Mr. Levine. "I really thought this was such a rare opportunity that would never come again, that in any case I was meant to be there for some reason and that six million people had died and I said to him, 'I believe God put you on this Earth to make things better between your people and mine.' I said those words to the pope. And he stopped talking. And he looked down." He never replied directly.

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