Jewish history

The unpromised land: Exile experience cannot be severed from modern Jewish history - opinion

It is crucial not to sever modern Jewish history from the interim, desert experience of the past two thousand years.

 DESOLATE DESERT landscape: This summary invites us to focus on those 40 years during which the Children of Israel wandered (Illustrative).
 THEN-PRIME MINISTER Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein shake hands, as then-US president Bill Clinton applauds, at the peace treaty signing ceremony at the border between the two countries, in 1994.

This week in Jewish history: Israel and Jordan end state of enmity

 IDF soldiers seen in the aftermath of Hamas's Nova music festival massacre in Re'im, southern Israel, on October 7, 2023.

Dr. Yoav Heller on October 7: sexual violence and confronting evil

 THANK YOU, Selman Waksman, for isolating streptomycin.

This week in Jewish history: Miracle aids and antibiotics


Parashat Pinchas: Every Jew is torn between hope and history

Moses does not stand alone on Nevo – we stand with him. Together, we gaze toward a future we build but may never fully enter. Together with him, many Jews look toward a land they may never cross.

 An illustrative image of a man in a robe on a mountaintop with the sun shining.

This week in Jewish history: Moses breaks the Tablets

A highly abridged weekly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History.

 Moses is seen breaking the Tablets after coming down from Mount Sinai.

This northern Norway city has adopted a one-of-a-kind approach to observing Shabbat

Located on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle, this Norwegian city has a unique approach to observing Shabbat and a history of handling challenging situations.

 The river Nid offers picturesque views in Trondheim, Norway, home to one of the northernmost Jewish communities in the world.

Israel’s war doctrine is ancient wisdom wrapped in modern warfare - opinion

Israel’s willingness to act decisively and preemptively is sometimes misunderstood by outsiders but rarely questioned within the Jewish world.

 Smoke seen rising from a building after a reported Israeli strike in the southwest of Iran, June 21, 2025

Staro Sajmiste: Belgrade's fairground of death for the Balkans' Jews

From formidable fairground to a camp of death, the dark history of the Nazi camp within Belgrade’s borders

 Prisoners of the Staro Sajmište concentration camp in Belgrade.

Maryland man arrested for threats to Philadelphia Jewish museum  

Clift A. Seferlis was arrested on June 17 and charged with mailing threatening communications, one of which made reference to “Kristallnacht,” a Nazi pogrom carried out in 1938.

 Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, March 16, 2024

This week in Jewish history: Haganah formed in Israel, Google acquires Waze

A highly abridged weekly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History.

 THE WAZE app came out in 2013 (hence, the older-model smartphone pictured)

A Name Worthy of Gratitude

Why “Donald” should join “Alexander” as a name of honor in Jewish history

US President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025.

Shavuot 2025: Why do we group Jewish holidays together?

By adding Purim to the duo of Passover and Shavuot, this trio reminds us that hiddenness is not static. It is dynamic.

 PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG attends a ‘Book of Esther’ reading wearing a protective mask, at the Ahavat Tzion synagogue in Beit Shemesh in 2022. ‘God is hiding His face, and we are experiencing a world in which it seems that God is absent,’ says the writer.

Shavuot in 1948: Harvesting the first fruits of Israeli statehood under siege

It was the collision of Israel’s past with its present and future. The offerings may have been meager. The dairy dishes improvised. But the spirit was resolute.

 SHAVUOT, ONE of the three pilgrimage festivals, marked the wheat harvest in biblical Israel. It concludes the seven-week period beginning at Passover

Reaccepting the Torah: Looking back the first Shavuot after the fall of Nazi Germany

For many Holocaust survivors, May 18, 1945 was the first Shavuot they were able to celebrate after years of war.

 AMERICAN CHAPLAIN Rabbi Herschel Schacter conducts religious services at the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945