From King David to Larry David: A New Look at Jewish Humor
For better, and for worse, Jeremy Dauber’s Jewish Comedy: A Serious History tells the story of Jewish comedy as the story of …
commentary
Is French Postmodernism Good for the Jews?
“If you believe that liberal democracy is not to be cherished but overthrown, if you believe that moral value attaches …
Shmatte Business
Why are Jewish children’s books so bad? Anyone seeking a perfect metaphor for the limitations of Jewish children’s literature will find …
Why Won’t American Jews Learn Hebrew?
The stubborn American Jewish refusal to treat Hebrew as a language that can be learned, spoken, and used is nothing …
Philadelphia Story
Dan Burt’s memoir of Jewish Philadelphia in the 1940s and 50s is a tale of immigrants, brawlers, cops, and crooks. …
A Response to “The Spirit of Jewish Conservatism”
Eric Cohen’s call for “a new Jewish conservatism” is constructive and forward-looking, which is as it should be. While it …
Drawing Conclusions: Joann Sfar and the Jews of France
On March 19, 2012, a French jihadi on a shooting spree targeted a Jewish school in Toulouse, murdering three children …
Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist
For anyone interested in modern Israel, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a …
Still Finding Vivian Maier
Tonight I saw the Vivian Maier documentary. The film is fascinating, extremely well made, and decidedly worth seeing, if ultimately …
Culture and the Classroom
Programs of Jewish studies in colleges and universities have added greatly to the possibilities for Jewish self-understanding. But they offer …
Post-Protestant–Catholic–Jew
Impressionistic, idiosyncratic, Joseph Bottum’s An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America swoops and veers like the …
Historical Revisionism is Hell
Mary Louise Roberts, a scholar at the University of Wisconsin who has focused on “issues of gender in fin-de-siècle France,” …
A Response to David Myers
Last month, David Myers, professor of Jewish history at UCLA, published an interesting essay in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal …
Generic Israeli Poet
Joanna Chen’s essay on Israeli poet Agi Mishol in the usually excellent Los Angeles Review of Books is an unfortunate snooze. Chen, …
More Baghdad in Verse
I just read Joseph Braude’s excellent review of Reuven Snir’s enticing anthology of Baghdad poems, which I reviewed last month. …
A Memory of Marcel Dubois
The Tikvah Fund website republishes Jonathan Yudelman’s essay from the February issue of First Things about Marcel Dubois, the French-born …
The Disappointment of Smaug
I loved the first Peter Jackson Hobbit film, and if I am cooler now towards his three amazing Lord of …
