ABSTRACT This article argues that Abraham Joshua Heschel’s use of the term “Israel” between 1948 and 1955 reflects a sustained theological effort to reclaim its meaning amid competing Zionist and Christian interpretations. Through a close comparative reading of three essays that later formed the basis of the final chapter of God in Search of Man, “The People Israel” (1955), the study traces Heschel’s gradual articulation of “Israel” as a covenantal-dialogical category rather than a national or supersessionist one. Situating these texts within both Heschel’s intellectual development and the broader post-1948 controversy surrounding the naming of the State of Israel, the article argues that Heschel’s early postwar writings preserve a distinctly diasporic understanding of “Israel” while resisting its reduction to the political identity of a conventional nation-state or to a universal church. In doing so, the study challenges the prevailing tendency to interpret Heschel’s thought primarily through the lens of his later and more explicit support for Zionism. Finally, the article traces a shift in Heschel’s position during his first visit to Israel in 1957, when he began to acknowledge the state as an established political reality and to articulate a vision for it in light of his earlier theological understanding of “Israel.”
ABSTRACT The simple children's game of dreidel eventually became a vehicle for religious and educational messages. New meanings were attached both to the origin of the game itself—the claim that it was used to conceal Torah study from the Greeks—and to the letters inscribed on the sides of the spinning top, best known today as the acronym “Nes Gadol Haya Sham” (a great miracle happened there). This article traces the origin and development of these two religious interpretations. It shows how a popular folk practice can be transformed through successive layers of interpretation into a vehicle for religious education and communal memory.
The literature generally holds that "the Jewish Question" did not arise even tangentially during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. We will examine the correctness of this assessment, focusing on Jewish participation in the uprising, (non-) antisemitism present during the events, and the components of the fear that arose among the Jews. We will seek to dispel, by means of contemporary documents and an extensive study of the literature, the common misconceptions that exist on many sides about the 1956 revolution in relation to the Jews.
This study investigates the emergence of neo-pashkevils-visually and rhetorically modernized wall posters-within ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) campaigns opposing military conscription in Israel. While traditional pashkevils (wall posters) function as informal instruments of ideological enforcement and communal discipline, neo-pashkevils incorporate comic-style illustrations, vibrant colors, and colloquial language aimed at youth audiences. Through the lens of symbolic boundary work theory, the present study analyzes 42 posters from the "Hardakim" campaign against enlisting in the IDF (2013-2024), in order to examine how these hybrid forms represent not a rupture with tradition but a strategic recalibration that reinforces communal boundaries through esthetic and affective innovation. The findings identify three interrelated dimensions of boundary work-participatory performance, internal differentiation, and reflexive adaptation-through which neo-pashkevils mobilize stylistic tools to sustain collective identity against ideological threat. By extending boundary work theory to a highly stylized religious medium, the study sheds light on how conservative communities integrate modern media strategies to uphold ideological continuity, revealing the dynamic interplay between cultural preservation and communicative adaptation.
