Summer 2015

Letters, Summer 2015

Otherwise than J, Internalized Guilt, Were Arendt and Herzl Wrong About France?, La Juive, Top Dog

Israel’s Northern Border and the Chaos in Syria: A Symposium

Elliott Abrams, Itamar Rabinovich, Amos Yadlin

In 2015, we asked Elliot Abrams, Itamar Rabinovich, and Amos Yadlin about the crisis at Israel's northern border. What can we learn now from the chaos of Syria?

Playing the Fool

Dara Horn

Of the many varieties of anti-Semitism, or anti-Judaism, that have plagued the Jews over the centuries, two recurrent general patterns can be identified by the holidays that celebrate triumphs over them: Purim and Hanukkah.

Paradox or Pluralism?

Peter L. Berger

Walzer’s paradox of liberation, if that is what it is, is that religion is back, or that despite the extraordinary success of secularizing revolutionaries it never quite went away.

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Allan Arkush

“Who’s this guy,” asked one of my sister’s friends, “who writes about secret truths? I can’t remember his name.”

The Life of the Flying Aperçu

Alan Mintz

Dickstein’s story is not a narrative of apostasy and rebellion; belief and doctrine play a minor role.

Give Ear O Ye Heavens

Robert Alter

Benjamin Harshav’s lifelong engagement in the forms of poetry has been a unique—and uniquely valuable—project.

Fanny and Hilde

Deborah Hertz

If Court Jews provided economic services, the salon women provided cultural ones that were rarely available to rulers and other nobles in the stuffy environs of aristocratic society.

Tested Loyalties

Sharon Hart-Green

What if a national leader chooses to bring disgrace on his family rather than compromise his political beliefs?

Everything Is PR

Marci Shore

Peter Pomerantsev’s narrative of “the surreal heart of the new Russia” features pink heels, private helicopters, and fantastical Midsummer Night’s Dream parties with trapeze artists and synchronized swimmers dressed as mermaids.

Desk Pounding and Jewish Leadership

Rafael Medoff

The trouble between Wise and Silver came to a head at the end of 1944, when Silver, over the Roosevelt administration’s objections, pressed for a congressional resolution endorsing Zionist aims—while Wise was quietly assuring the White House that he would do nothing for the resolution against the president’s wishes.

New Gleanings from an Old Book

Elli Fischer

Ruth, one of the shortest books in all of Tanakh, has a simple plot: A man from Bethlehem moves with his family to Moabite territory to ride out a famine in Judea, his two sons somewhat scandalously marry Moabite women, and all the men subsequently die.

A View from Reservoir Hill

Daniel Cotzin Burg

A shul that never left the Old Jewish Neighborhood lives, volunteers, and prays through the recent crisis in Baltimore.

The Great Gaon of Italian Art

Elliott Horowitz

Berenson’s teacher Charles Eliot Norton dismissively dubbed Berenson's method the “ear and toenail school,” but Berenson employed the technique in his first book to great effect.

An Al Schwimmer Production

Steven Pressfield

When the ancient Spartans sought to aid a friendly state in distress, they did not send troops or arms or money.

Strange Journey: A Response to Shmuel Trigano

Ethan B. Katz, Maud S. Mandel

Two historians challenge Shmuel Trigano’s analysis of anti-Semitic violence in France.

The View from Paris: A Rejoinder to Ethan Katz and Maud Mandel

Shmuel Trigano

The flaw Ethan B. Katz’s and Maud S. Mandel’s analysis of the position of Jews in France is that “they view the anti-Semitic violence we Jews are living through here in France through American-made binoculars,” says Shmuel Trigano.

How the Baby Got Its Philtrum

Abraham Socher

The idea of learning as a recovery of what we once possessed is what makes Bogart’s bubbe mayse, and ours, so memorable: We can all touch that little hollow and feel the impress of forgotten knowledge.