Ten Favorites from Five Years
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Conservative Judaism: A Requiem
In 1971, 41 percent of American Jews were part of the Conservative movement. Today it’s 18 percent and falling fast. What happened? Maybe its leaders never knew what Conservative Judaism was really about.
Pro-Creation
Economist Bryan Caplan thinks parents “overcharge” themselves when it comes to investing in their children. Glückel of Hameln knew better.
Lincoln and the Jews
Lincoln encountered a surprising number of Jews in his life. Throughout, he seems to have treated them with the benevolence and absence of prejudice one would expect from the Great Emancipator.
A Stone for His Slingshot
In 1948 screenwriter Ben Hecht lectured “a thousand bookies, ex-prize fighters, gamblers, jockeys, touts,” and gangsters on the burdens and responsibilities of Jewish history. The night at Slapsy Maxie’s was a big success, but the speech was lost, until now.
With Words We Govern Men
In November 1975, US Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan launched an empassioned battle against the “Zionism is Racism” resolution. A new book on the subject spurs memories of working with him at that historic moment.
Neither Friend Nor Enemy: Israel in the EU
After five years at the European Parliament, the author reflects on Israel’s place in the discourse of the EU’s chattering (and legislating) class.
The Poet from Vilna
Avrom Sutzkever and Max Weinreich, a memoir.
The Rebbe and the Yak
What do you do when your ancestor appears to you in a dream saying that he is trapped inside the body of a Tibetan yak? If you’re the Ustiler Rebbe in Haim Be’er’s new novel, you go to Tibet to find him, of course.
A Tale of Two Synagogues
Frank Lloyd Wright built a dazzling temple outside Philadelphia. Too bad he didn’t look closely at the synagogue of Gwoździec, Poland, built two hundred years earlier.
Salsa and Sociology
When I was a child, eight or nine, I evolved a theory about different kinds of Jews, based, more or less, on the hot sauce we kept on our table.
Suggested Reading
What Goes Into Survival: A Report from the Washington Rally
People came by the hundreds of thousands, schlepping by train, chartered bus, overnight flight. Students raised money from relatives. Federations funded last-minute airfare. It was a rally for people who don’t attend rallies.
Return without Returning
In Micah Goodman’s new book, The Wondering Jew, he argues that Israeli Jews should develop a relationship with Jewish tradition that falls somewhere between strict adherence and total abandonment.
Quibbles
Harry Wolfson, Reinhold Niebuhr, and chutzpah.
Summer of ’36
By 1936, Joseph Roth’s alcoholism was increasingly desperate, and his friendship with Stefan Zweig was frayed. But still that summer gave them an opportunity to recover something of their old friendship.
