Spring 2018

Letters

Letters, Spring 2018

Toynbee’s “Zionist Card,” Their Man in Beijing?, Kibbutz Dreams, and the Mortara Affair Redux

Features

Law, Justice, and Memory in Poland

Jan T. Gross

Under the Law and Justice Party, Poland has just criminalized the life stories of its Jewish survivors. Here’s why.

The Jewish Critic and the Devil’s Point of View

Ruth R. Wisse

We have never met this Mendele before, but he expects us to trust him, appreciate his wit, catch his references, and share his attitudes. In a few deft lines, the author created a figure so democratic you don’t have to look up to him, so familiar you don’t have to fear him, and so appealing you won’t realize you’re being flogged.

Reviews

Exodus and Consciousness

Benjamin D. Sommer

Who left Egypt ? And how did the Israelites experience God? Richard Friedman is a biblical detective, James Kugel is more of a literary anthropologist.

God’s Law in Human Hands

Richard Hidary

A Judean, a Stoic, a Jewish philosopher, a Jesus follower, and a rabbi walk into a seminar room at Yale, and Professor Christine Hayes asks them, “What do you mean when you say divine law?”

In the City of Killing

Mark Mazower

The Kishinev pogrom originated in a rumor, widely disseminated and believed around the area that Easter, that the imperial authorities had given permission for several days of uninterrupted violence against the Jews.

Child of Occupation

Liam Hoare

Hidden in Modiano's explosive novellas is a desire for answers, a quest for understanding, perhaps even a search for identity, all of which becomes clearer as his writing matures and his methodical qualities rise to the surface.

Strange Miracle

Allan Arkush

When Vice President Pence spoke in Jerusalem, he was tapping into a long tradition. . .

Not of This World

Amy Newman Smith

In writing his first book for young readers, Aharon Appelfeld seems to have split himself and his life story between the two title characters: resourceful Adam, a boy of the land whose knowledge of the forest keeps them safe and fed, and bookish Thomas, a doubter in both faith and his own abilities.

Telling the Whole Truth: Albert Memmi

Daniel Gordon

Albert Memmi began his career as a writer of fiction, but, with the appearance of The Colonizer and the Colonized in 1957, the novelist who wrote like a sociologist became a sociologist who wrote like a novelist.

Black Money

A.E. Smith

Terrorism is not cheap. Find a way of taking terrorists’ money, the logic would seem to dictate, and you may have a way of shutting them down.

Out-of-Body Experiences: Recent Israeli Science Fiction and Fantasy

Michael Weingrad

The Yarkon is as good a site as any for pondering the relationship between Israel and the imagination.

Strategic Imperatives

Amos Yadlin, Ari Heistein

In his new book, Charles Freilich examines the question of how future governments ought to cope with Israel's fundamental defense predicaments.

Readings

Moses, Murder, and the Jewish Psyche

Lawrence Kaplan

Sigmund Freud had always identified with Moses. At the end of his life, as the Nazis rose to power, he returned to the Bible and the origins of the Jewish psyche. We all know his scandalous theory—or do we?