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 …
Max and Mirra, Edo and Enam
The true story of Max Eitingon is still being written. A member of Sigmund Freud’s inner circle and financial supporter …
The Story of the Oy
I like the way Tamara Faith Berger writes sex, although the sex she writes is always of the glowering, desperate …
Ivanhoe and Jewish Politics
I have fond if vague memories of the 1952 film “Ivanhoe,” with Elizabeth Taylor in the role of Rebecca, and which …
The Once and Future Jews of Dan Simmons
Science fiction writer Dan Simmons is the author of more than two dozen novels. Not all of them are science …
Róźycki’s Colonies
The poet devours God in “Ants and Sharks,” the twenty-sixth poem in Tomasz Róźycki’s sonnet sequence Colonies, displacing God at …
Tevye’s Secret
Tevye is Sholem Aleichem’s most beloved character and the Tevye stories his most widely acclaimed literary works. A good deal …
