It was perhaps not surprising just after the 2016 election to discover that a portion of president-elect trump’s base espoused ideologies of white supremacy. What was surprising to those who were paying attention but perhaps less familiar, was that trump also garnered significant support from Orthodox Jews, particularly Zionists, both in the US and Israel. While there are many reasons, both historical and expedient, that these particular Jewish groups chose to throw their support behind trump, it’s the coincidence that one of the most historically maligned groups would agree on their choice for political representation as the people who have fought both in the past and present for their extermination and removal from power. What is the connection between Zionist Orthodox Jews and white supremacists?
Read More Promotional image for the PBS documentary. The documentary is full of jerky animations in this style, which doesn’t do much to help bolster the scholarship.
If you are an avid PBS fan, you may have seen the premier of a new documentary titled Ornament of the World in the last month. It’s a piece about the interfaith world of medieval Spain, and given that I work on the very related field of cross-cultural contact in medieval Sicily, I should have been excited to see it, but, frankly, I was surprised and somewhat exhausted at the thought that this movie had been made. Because not only was its perspective on interreligious contact left behind by the field of medieval studies almost 20 years ago, but its entire approach to the question assumes that peoples of different religions should be inherently separate.
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We need to talk about intermittent fasting. Read More