How American Jews Came to Believe That Tikkun Olam Was at the Core of Their Tradition
Tikkun Olam’s easy path to enshrinement as the Jewish truth has depended on the widespread ignorance among millions of Jews …
commentary
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 …
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 …
