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Hiroo Onoda was a high-rank intelligence officer in the Japanese army. Sent during World War II to the Lubang island in the Philippines, his orders were to do literally everything to prevent the enemy from invading the island. Should he failed, he’d better not return to Japan, they said. Hiroo Onoda had no intentions to defy his superiors, therefore after an American force did invade the island, on February 28, 1945, and surrendered the Japanese, he took off to hide in the woods. He lived there for years, with nothing but his sword, stems and stolen rice to feed on, and[…]

Many of us spend significant time on trains every day traveling to the office and back. Some devote their train time to working, others to putting out bureaucratic fires, and the rest leaf through the daily papers or take a brief nap. But how many people do you know who exploit their time on the train to contemplate the concept of “time” itself? In 1905, Albert Einstein worked in the government patent office in Bern, Switzerland. He traveled to and from the office by train. There, he said, he conducted imaginary experiments in his head, in which he examined how[…]

The guide to “how an entitled man should behave” recommends – particularly in the #MeToo Era – that he refrain from publicly remarking that Jane Doe’s legs rouse his libido. That is to say, he can do it, but he has to also be prepared to eulogize his career. In the past, men of status took pride in their attraction to women’s feminine lower limbs. Napoleon Bonaparte declared when he first saw Josephine walking in the palace antechamber that her legs caused him to fall head-over-heels in love. Titus, the military commander who destroyed the Second Temple – they say[…]

A bizarre phenomenon took place in Europe during the months of Spring. People claimed during that time of year that a significant number of people had disappeared from the face of the earth. Rigorous investigations – based mainly on the work of advanced medieval Identification and Forensic Science divisions – determined that those missing persons fell prey to a dark Jewish ritual. That liters of gentile blood had been extracted from the victims’ bodies with which to bake matza. What else could it be. Historians crossed swords over when and where the first blood libel in history occurred. In Norwich[…]

It was the same old story every weekend. On our way home from Shabbat dinner at my sister’s house in Haifa’s Ahuza neighborhood, my grandfather – may he rest in peace – would stop in a tiny alley to bow down at length to a street sign. This peculiar ritual took many seconds to complete, before my grandfather continued on his way as if nothing had happened. When in first grade the shapes of letters began to make sense to me, I read the sign for the first time: “Isaac Babel, Jewish-Russian writer.” Not long after that, my grandfather presented[…]

January 30 marked Eight years since the passing of Chava Rosenfarb, one of the most significant, albeit underrated, Yiddish writers of the late 20th century. Rosenfarb was born in 1923 in Lodz, Poland. At that time, Lodz was about one-third Jewish, and the experience of growing up in a city with such a strong and diverse Jewish presence would have a profound impact on Rosenfarb’s work. Additionally, her parents, Abraham and Simma, were members of the Bund, a Jewish political and cultural movement that advocated for socialism, as well as for Yiddish as the primary language of the Jewish people.[…]

“Filth, lack of discipline! Let us glimpse the site where the tragedy took place…Shattered windows, broken doors, dismantled floors…working bathrooms in only one home…How much time does it take for a European to lose his semblance of culture in conditions like these? None. Can you preserve culture with draconian punishments like denying soup or benches? How can people avoid being eaten by lice? What meaning does the word ‘culture’ have here? Did anyone among those responsible spend even one night in a hellhole like this? What do they want from these people? How could someone even dare to criticize them?[…]

He was paranoid, provocative, racist and chauvinist. But most people forgave him all of it, because he was a singular genius with an IQ over 200 and the memory of a Google server farm. Bobby Fischer, World Chess Champion from 1972-1975, harbored neuroses that spilled over into his personal and public lives. As a teen, he joined a Christian cult called the Worldwide Church of God, which believed that the apocalypse was imminent. He also developed a hobby then that would become central in his life after retirement: intense anti-Semitic activity. The brilliant chess master began at some point to[…]

For most of history, Jews have lived outside of the Land of Israel, whether in prosperous places or in poor countries. One place has always had a pretty small Jewish population – the Land of Israel. In the 17th century, some 3,000 Jews were living in Jerusalem under the Ottoman rule. During that century, they suffered, in particular, a couple of dreadful years of persecutions, arrests, and famine, that remained in the collective Jewish memory for years and decades after. The man responsible for all those hardships was Muhammad Ibn Farouk, intermittent ruler of Jerusalem from 1621-1626. The Ottoman Empire[…]