How the Political Behavior of Black and Jewish Americans Became Their Cultural Identity
What I find most intriguing about Steadfast Democrats and, as we will see, why I think it is a book with relevance …
Jews
Stan Lee’s Comic Book Life
Even in comparison with so many other contributions to American popular culture and entertainment, comic books are an especially Jewish …
The Yale Fantasy of Leigh Bardugo
The setting for Leigh Bardugo’s acclaimed new fantasy novel ‘Ninth House’ is Yale, and it’s an unintentionally revealing look at …
Zionavar
On the Jewish themes, characters, and subtexts of Guy Gavriel Kay. Read the essay at the Jewish Review of Books.
Simon Ings’s Brave Jew World
In the alternate history of The Smoke, Simon Ings maps sci-fi horror onto the Jews. Read the full review at …
The Middle Eastern Jews Who Were Some of Israel’s Earliest Undercover Spies
On a summer night in 1949, two men approached the Jordanian soldiers at a military post in the Old City …
The Last Unicorn as Post-Holocaust Fable
For six decades and counting, Peter S. Beagle has written fantasy literature with a Jewish-American sensibility. An overview of his …
Does a 350-page Comic Book About Herzl Avoid the Pitfalls of the Graphic Novel?
To answer that question means confronting some hard truths not only about Jewish graphic novels in particular but about graphic …
Of Were-Owls and Wandering Jews
My fantasy reading this month included Jewish shape-shifters and “Pharisees,” Michael Moorcock and Rudyard Kipling, and a new Israeli novel …
Why Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is Bad Jewish Fantasy
Sure, all this beats a pogrom. But given that Novik clearly intends the book to work as a commentary on …
The First-Ever Anthology of Israeli Science Fiction and Fantasy
And how it compares with a Jewish American anthology. Read the full review at Mosaic.
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 …
My Funny Levantines
Two new novels offer angles of vision into Jewish experience in the (pre- or non-Israeli) parts of the modern Middle …
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 …
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 …
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 …
investigations and fantasies 