Many Americans associate Yiddish strictly with Eastern Europe. But its horizons are much broader than that, especially amid today’s revival.
Articles on Jewish culture
Displaying 1 - 20 of 27 articles
To understand what religion looks like in 21st-century America, researchers may need to ask different questions.
For some Sephardic Jews today, holidays provide a rare opportunity to hear the now-endangered Judeo-Spanish language.
What do you do on Dec. 25 if you don’t celebrate Christmas? For Jewish Americans, the answers range from takeout to filling a shift for Christian colleagues.
Traditional Jewish ceremonies, like Christian ones, marked a woman’s transition from daughter to wife − going from her parents to her husband. But there are creative ways to reflect gender equality while honoring tradition.
Rabbis married to non-Jews exist within Humanist, Reform, Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist Jewish movements, although not within Conservative and Orthodox streams.
Jewish traditions to mark a marriage often involve ceremonies and celebrations before the big day, whether it’s a ritual bath or even a fiance’s conversion to Judaism.
Most ideas about Jewish culture in the United States come from Ashkenazi traditions, but there’s a vast landscape of Jewish cultures around the world – and represented in the US.
Assimilation no doubt played a role in making Hanukkah the commercialized holiday it is today. But other factors shaped the modern festival, too, a scholar of Jewish studies and gender explains.
The diversity of Israel’s Jewish population has been a source of tensions, but also strength, over the decades.
Advanced artificial intelligence is new, but a similar idea has been around for hundreds of years: the power of a just-right sequence of numbers, letters or elements to animate matter.
Like many Jewish practices, the harvest festival of Sukkot largely takes place at home − meaning families can incorporate many meaningful traditions.
The Passover Seder has tradition and remembrance at its core, but has also evolved throughout the centuries in Jewish communities around the world.
Tu BiShvat has religious roots, but early Zionists embraced the day in new, more secular ways.
An expert in the representation of the Holocaust on film explains the responsibility of the reader to educate themselves beyond the depth of a single work of fiction.
You’ll likely spot a hanukkiah, which has become a shortcut to identify Jewishness.
Multicultural Jewish families and Jews of color are innovating food-centered holidays to bring their whole selves to the table.
Many religions value forgiveness, but the details of their teachings differ. A psychologist of religion explains how Christian and Jewish attitudes compare.
Perhaps the most famous document of its type, Anne Frank’s diary is a version of the Holocaust without the actual horrors.
The British Jewish community celebrate Hanukah in a way that borrows traditions from the US as well as Israel.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies & Jewish Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
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Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University
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Professor, Department of Global Studies, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
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Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
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Associate Teaching Professor of English, Florida International University
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Professor of Legal Pluralism, Religious Family Laws, and Human Rights, University of Cape Town
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Associate Professor of Israel Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York
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Associate Professor, Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University
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Department Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Otis College of Art and Design
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Director of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, University of Arizona
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University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University
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Senior Lecturer in Media, Adelaide University
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Professor of Modern History, Royal Holloway, University of London
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Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University
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Lecturer in Screen Media, University of the Sunshine Coast