Gates

My favorite childhood stories describe protagonists passing through a barrier into an alternate reality. Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a subterranean Wonderland. Max escapes into a jungle and dances with the delightful Wild Things. Milo takes a toy car ride through the Phantom Tollbooth. One of the first Hebrew stories I read was …

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Yiddish Legacies

For those who love Yiddish writers and literary intrigue, a JTA article this week told a remarkable story about the archives of the great writer Chaim Grade, which, thanks to the joint efforts of YIVO and Israel’s National Library, is now available in its entirety online. (According to the archives description, it contains items in many languages, including Turkmen, …

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Jewish Cultural Restoration

Environmental historian Laura J. Martin, in her recent book Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration, distinguishes between three philosophies of managing wild areas–conservation, preservation, restoration: Conservation… concerns the sustainable use of natural resources like trees, water, and fish. The goal is to extract, and perhaps actively replenish, economically valuable species and materials in a …

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