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Begin's Iron Wall:
Ideology, Objectivity and Historical Reality in The Revolt
by Eric Leskly

Legal (In)stability:
Jewish Law and the Plight of the 'Chained Wife'
by Isaac Nesser

For Israel has no constellation:
The Singular Status of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel in the Astrological Writings of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra
by Rachel Furst

Radical Heart, Pragmatic Mind:
Politics and Poetics of Helen Grant Yellin
by Eric Yellin

Review Essay:
Judaism and Evolution An Historical and Philosophical Perspective
by Ari Hakimi

Understanding the Riots at Westminster:
Anglo-Jewish--Anglo-Christian Interaction Under Angevin Rule
by Andrew Jakabovics

Issues of objectivity are never easy for the historian to confront, and they are even more difficult when polemical debate and rhetoric surround the history in question. Reconstructing the past is harder still when the actors seem to have been larger than life, have gained a mythical status, and are held up by their followers as beyond criticism.

Menachem Begin is certainly one of these characters, as are his memoirs, written up in The Revolt. While his autobiographical account of Mandatory Palestine and the years following the establishment of the State of Israel should be considered a useful tool for understanding the tumultuous period in question, the work is entangled in ideological visions of history that clash with most other versions of the events of this highly controversial period.

This background lays the groundwork for perhaps the most glaring question to arise from a reading of The Revolt: of what use is objectivity as a concept if it is impossible to realize? At least since David Hume, Western moral philosophy has recognized the potential for an "impartial spectator" who renders a priori judgment based solely on the evidence presented to him, devoid of ideological platform or belief. I am not nearly so bold as to think myself capable of being such a spectator. Yet without at least an attempt, there would be no closure or resolution on this matter. As the Jewish proverb tells us, "it is not your task to finish the work, but neither are you free to tarry from it."

Debates about agunah almost inevitably revolve around just these questions. Broad agreement about the need for change is undercut by disagreements about the nature and degree of that change: some call for relatively more halakhic innovation, others call for relatively less. Apart from its intrinsic interest, agunah is a convenient case-study which can hopefully help to answer questions about halakhic dynamics more generally, or, at least, to formulate better questions. The present paper, in this sense, is a limited, first attempt to engage a huge set of questions. I propose some answers in broad outline, in the spirit of a working hypothesis, with the expectation that they will continue to change and grow.

Many thanks to Professor Francesca Polletta of the Sociology Department for her time and patience, and for helping a bewildered sophomore shape a set of vague ideas into something more closely resembling social science.

For us moderns, astrology connotes horoscope columns and psychic hotlines. Medieval astrology conjures up images of point-hatted Merlins star-gazing through crude telescopes. It is hard to imagine anyone taking that stuff seriously.

you are among those who assume that astrology is antithetical to Judaism and that no respectable Jewish scholar has ever endorsed its practice, it may come as a surprise to learn that many God-fearing, medieval Jews were Neoplatonists who firmly believed that astrology played a role in the governing of the cosmos. Prominent among them was Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, best-known in the contemporary Jewish world for his surviving biblical commentary.

The context of a class on medieval science, I was intrigued by the extent to which Ibn Ezra and other leading, rabbinic figures participated in and contributed to the scientific discourse of their day. In a world where religion ruled, these medieval Jews were advocates of the belief that astrology—then, a well-respected science, more akin to modern astronomy—could be integrated within a religious framework. Their contributions, in that regard, were remarkably similar to those of many God-fearing Jewish scientists in our own times. It is my hope that this paper will help, in a miniscule way, to bridge the centuries between us and them and to demonstrate that there is much in the study of the distant past that can shed light on our lives today.

Many historians and scholars believe that the next step in historiography is an approach called social history. A reaction to the often personality-less analysis that has marked the historical profession since its beginning, social history is often defined by its focus on individuals and their personal experiences, which are sometimes quite ordinary (i.e. giving voice to the voiceless). The mission of social history is to insert real and normal people into what we consider historical movement, rather than focusing on social and economic trends, as in early Marxist historiography, or on monumental events and people, as in classical history. With this scholarly project in mind, I attempted my first social history essay.

At the end of my junior year, I interviewed my grandmother for two one-hour-long sessions about her life up until the birth of her first child. There is plenty more to tell after that, but my focus was on her years as an independent young woman in Brooklyn, New York. The result of the interviews was an oral history that I believe reveals personal strength, rebellion, adaptation, and humor; and therefore, it seems to tell the story of a key generation in American Jewish history.

For many people, American Jewish history begins and ends with the immigrant generation that braved the journey from Europe between 1880 and 1924. Most of those people, crowded into the lower East Side of New York, were photographed by Jacob Riis and started a socialist political revolution in New York City, among other feats. It was my belief, especially as I interviewed my grandmother, that the second generation of American Jewry had its story to tell as well. Because just as the immigrant generation seems to define old Jewish New York, many people leap immediately from this group to the newest generation of Jews in the United States who are disproportionately represented in the upper echelons of America. There was work, struggle, pain, and rebellion between these groups that made the latter possible. One such story is told here through my grandmother, Helen Grant Yellin.

Evolutionary theory has come a long way since Charles Darwin first introduced it to the world in 1859. Now an almost ubiquitously accepted fact in the scientific world, evolution still invokes controversy and debate in many religious circles. This paper gives a brief historical background to evolutionary theory, traces the idea in Jewish thought and scholarship, and attempts to reconcile some of the better-known incompatibilities. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Robert Pollack of the Biology Department, my mentor for this project. Dr. Pollack was an invaluable source of advice and support for my paper and a true inspiration to work with.

What you are about to read is an examination of the Anglo-Jewish community in the middle years of its residence in England. More than that, it is the product of a process whose academic roots lie several semesters earlier, whose geographic origins lie not in Oxford but at the ox ford in easternmost Europe (the Bosporus), and whose initial subject was an examination of trade routes under the emperor Justinian in Byzantium based on the Hagia Sofia's construction as detailed in Procopius's Buildings. Perhaps the greatest and most lasting lesson that should be drawn from this essay has less to do with the content of the work than the simple fact of its existence. A senior essay in medieval history composed by an urban studies major is undoubtedly rare. It could have only been made possible with the assistance and encouragement of the devoted faculty of history, in particular Professor Adam Kosto, and of urban studies, all of whom provided me with the disparate sources and varied analytical tools that I found crucial to multidisciplinary studies. It is a testament to the academic atmosphere at Columbia University that nurtures intellectual curiosity and allows it to flourish. I am deeply grateful for my four years within her walls.