From Codex Manesse

The Complicated History of Pointy Hats

What do sorcerers, bishops, and garden gnomes all have in common? Pointy hats that share a common story deeply enmeshed in European antisemitism.

Michael Gold: Red Scare Victim

The author of Jews Without Money, a proletarian lit best-seller, was ostracized for his Communism and derided for his prose. Today he is all but forgotten.
An elections poster of the General Jewish Labour Bund hung in Kiev, 1917. Heading: "Where we live, there is our country!"

How the Jewish Labor Bund Changed After World War II

For those thousands involved with the Bund, the group played an important role in a era marked by trauma, displacement, and resettlement.
The dwarf Gimli from the film 'The Lord Of The Rings', 1978.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s Jewish Dwarves

The peoples of Middle Earth weren’t just a product of Tolkien’s creative mind; they were shaped by the anti-Jewish culture that surrounded him.
The new moon

How Does the Jewish Calendar Work?

The complicated system that determines the High Holy Days is a relatively new creation, dating to around 350 CE.
Circus Amok's Jenny Romaine by David Shankbone, New York City

How Queer Jews Reclaimed Yiddish

Queer Yiddishkeit challenges the notion that Yiddish is inherently heteronormative or conservative.
Demonstrators during a march calling for safe legal abortions for all women, in New York City, New York, 1978.

Jewish Law and Abortion

A practicing physician reviews contributions of Jewish ethics and rabbinic thought to the issue of abortion.
Eva Frank

Meet Eva Frank: The First Jewish Female Messiah

Was this revered female figurehead an empowered leader or a tragic victim in her father's wake?
Barabbas

A Passover Tradition to Promote Jewish Unity

Freeing a prisoner—a gesture of generosity and benevolence—may have been a way to bring together a fractured spiritual community.
Alexander Berkman speaks at Socialist meeting in Union Square, New York, on May Day, 1908

The NYC –> RUS Yiddish Socialist Pipeline

At the turn of the twentieth century, Yiddish became the language of political organizing for Russian Jews, thanks to the flow of literature from New York.