Menachem Mendel

This is a nice site that includes dozens of ancient maps of Jerusalem.

Posted on May 8th, 2013 under Jewish History. Comments: None

The following news article appeared on the front page of the New York Times on June 30, 1967. It describes the removal of the barriers that once divided Jerusalem. I have a special affinity for this article and not only because of the joyous news that it reports, but also because it appeared in the [...]

Posted on May 7th, 2013 under Israel, Israeli History, Jewish History, Zionism. Comments: 1

At PBS Newshour Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein write about their recent book The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 . (HT to the Israeli website Compress that posted a translation of this article.) The key message of “The Chosen Few” is that the literacy of the Jewish people, coupled with a set of [...]

Posted on April 28th, 2013 under Jewish History. Comments: None

Shaul Stampfer and the Jewish-Khazar connection (or lack thereof) [HT Jesús de Prado Plumedon on Twitter]: For previous posts about Jews and the Khazars see here, here, and here.

Posted on April 22nd, 2013 under Ashkenaz, Jewish History. Comments: 4

I hardly know anything about tekhelet, but this from Green Prophet sounded interesting: According to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society the ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue may have important new applications in nanotechnology. Researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia in the US were surprised [...]

Posted on April 15th, 2013 under Jewish History, Jewish Law. Comments: 2

The Israel Antiquities Authority has begun to post online the archive from the period of the British Mandate. It is sure to be one of the most important resources for the study of life in Palestine during the British Mandate. Its focus is on material about archaeological excavations that were conducted during that period or [...]

Posted on January 16th, 2013 under Academic Research, Internet, Israel, Israeli History, Jewish History. Comments: 1

The Center for Jewish History is hosting a collaborative project, Early New York Synagogue Archives. It contains pre-20th century archival material from Shearith Israel, B’nai Jeshrun, and Ansche Chesed. The material can be found here. HT from the National Library of Israel Twitter feed.

Posted on January 11th, 2013 under American Judaism, Jewish History. Comments Off

Am Ha-Sefer, a blog in Hebrew that focuses on Hebrew books and printing, has a new post about references to the Black Death in rabbinic literature and the effect of the Black Death on Jews and anti-Semitism.

Posted on January 10th, 2013 under Hebrew Literature, Jewish History, Rabbinic Literature. Comments Off

Haaretz is reporting about a new scholarly article that claims to have shown that European Jews are indeed descended from the Khazars. The author of the article, Eran Elhaik, claims the following: My research refutes 40 years of genetic studies, all of which have assumed that the Jews constitute a group that is genetically isolated [...]

Posted on December 28th, 2012 under Jewish History. Comments: 8