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 …
What Happened When the Messiah Met Machiavelli
Reubeni, Prince of the Jews, a surprisingly contemporary 1925 novel by Kafka’s close friend Max Brod, reminds us of the perils …
The Inklings
Had you the good fortune of being present at a gathering of the Inklings, you might have witnessed J. …
What Does an Acclaimed Israeli Sci-Fi Writer Have to Tell Us about the Israel of Tomorrow?
“To this familiar Tel Aviv scene, however, with its characteristic mix of squalor and charm, Tidhar has added cyborgs, chip-implanted …
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 …
A Fraternal Note (by James Reiss)
One brother emigrated to Israel, the other remained in the United States. Both became poets, searching for words the other …
A Cipher and His Songs
If you are a lover of Israeli music then you certainly know Avraham Halfi (1906–1980), though perhaps not by name. …
Why Are There No Great Israeli Superheroes?
Age of Ultron, this year’s Avengers film sequel, has generated $1.4 billion worldwide at the box office so far, a …
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 …
In the Crucifix Kingdom
In a dark Yiddish masterpiece that predated the Holocaust by two decades, the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg envisioned the annihilation …
Jews of Dune
Frank Herbert’s Dune, often named as the greatest science fiction novel ever written, turns 50 this year. Set thousands of …
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 …
An Israeli Writer’s Great American Novel
Israeli reviewers have repeatedly invoked the word “ambitious” to describe Reuven Namdar’s Hebrew novel, Habayit asher neḥerav (“The House That Was …
The Russians Have Pushkin, the Jews Have Bialik
A powerful new film, available online, shows us the man who more than any other shaped the modern Hebrew language. A …
Patrick Modiano’s (Jewish?) Sorrow
In awarding the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature to Patrick Modiano, a French novelist whose father was Jewish, did the …
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 …
Why Are Jews Conservative?
“We Jews are so smart, just give us five or ten years and the most prominent American conservatives will be …
Meet the New Weird
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy of sci-fi / horror novels is contemporary, in some ways even trendy. The cast of …
A British Eyewitness to Israel’s Birth
This is Jerusalem in every Man, A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness, Male & Female Clothings. And Jerusalem is …
