Illuminating the Book of Esther

For decades, scholars have written pages and pages attempting to solve the enigma of the so-called “Birds’ Head Haggadah,” an illustrated manuscript of the Passover Haggadah probably created in Germany in the early 14th century. Scholars have described the work as the earliest-known illuminated version of a Haggadah; its remaining 47 folios are preserved in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The mystery so many academics have been fascinated by lies in the way the characters are depicted around the text—with human bodies and sharp-beaked, bird-like heads.

A professor of Jewish studies at Vassar College in upstate New York, Marc Michael Epstein has introduced a series of provocative theories to the long-running academic conversation about this Haggadah. Now, after questioning the existing theories, claiming that those illustrated creatures are in fact griffins, and even challenging the academic community to rename the manuscript, he’s taking his research one step further. He’s creating a new illuminated manuscript, in the style of the Haggadah—but this time, it’ll be a Megillah.

Italy’s Far Right Is on the March

This fall marks 80 years since Fascist Italy passed the racist laws that reduced Italian Jews to second-class citizens. Overnight, children like my grandparents were barred from attending public schools and many of their parents from performing their jobs. In the following years, almost 8,000 Italians of Jewish descent were killed in the Nazi death camps.

Eight decades later, the Jewish population in Italy has shrunk, but it thrives. There are several Jewish day schools, kosher restaurants, and active synagogues spread all the way from Turin to Naples. Jewish culture and history are also flourishing: Public institutions are paying for a software-assisted translation of the Babylonian Talmud and the annual European Day of Jewish Culture involves the participation of nearly 90 cities across the country. And yet, thousands of Benito Mussolini’s nostalgics still visit the fascist dictator’s burial place to pay homage, and pigs’ heads are left at synagogues before Holocaust Memorial Day.

Enter the new government. 

The Algorithms Translating Talmud

Nearly 500 years after the Babylonian Talmud was printed in full for the first time in Venice, the same text is being printed once again in Italy, this time accompanied by an unprecedented Italian translation. The true innovation is not the translation itself, but the language parsing algorithms developed by a small, state-funded start-up company that were essential to this ambitious project.

Silicon Wadi: Israel’s Arab Tech Boom

Paulus VI is the single, narrow artery that snakes through the old city of Nazareth, choked with a seemingly endless line of vehicles. On either side of the thoroughfare, there is dust and noise and vendors chatting at high decibel in Arabic in relentless heat. For the last two years, a sign above a modern sand-colored building spells out in English, “Microsoft.” The new R&D headquarters of the American giant is just one of the several tech-related initiatives to open in the city in recent years.

Known as Israel’s Arab capital, Nazareth is home to 75,000 residents, most of whom are Muslims. Two years into the implementation of the Israeli government’s $3.85 billion plan for the “social development of Israel’s Arab population,” Nazareth is now pushing to take its place alongside emerging competition from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to become a hub of Middle Eastern tech entrepreneurship.

Roberto Saviano, Author of ‘Gomorrah,’ Takes on Internet Nazis

Later this month, Roberto Saviano, the renowned Italian journalist, will testify at the first hearing of a trial against 39 Italian neo-Nazis who were accused, among other things, of participating in an online group that incited racial discrimination and violence. For years, between 2009 and 2012, the group held discussions that included white supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric on the American hate site Stormfront. (Photo: Francesco Cuoccio / Flickr.)