Sidra dekoven ezrahi

A short, compelling history of the place of idols and idol-smashing in cultures ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to ISIS in current Mosul. A sobering assessment not only of violent acts of iconoclasm but of the myriad ways that museums, videos, and algorithms shape our civic conversations. There are times when one confronts a non-negotiable moral duty.

This is one of those times. I suspect that most readers of Tikkun in Israel, in America and in Europe, have worn out several pairs of shoes over the decades protesting injustices carried out by their own governments. Something more is demanded of us now.

Sidra dekoven ezrahi: Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi is Professor Emerita

For those of us in Israel, that may mean a serious disruption of our personal lives. I am writing this by the bedside of my ninety-eight-year old mother, watching the life forces slowly ebb. It is a strange privilege, the fear of the inevitable and the sorrow of anticipated loss mingled with gratitude for so many years of presence and a minimum of pain in this twilight time.

In , his wife, Leah, was two months pregnant when she died suddenly at the age of thirty-two of an undetected brain tumor, leaving her husband and a four-year-old daughter. Jewish Wisdom.