Fall 2018

Letters, Fall 2018

The Melting Pot and the Cheshire Cat, Yom Kippur Dance, The Courts and the People, and More

The Book of Radiance

Eitan P. Fishbane

Daniel Matt’s massive new English edition of the Zohar is not only a great translation, it is also one of the great commentaries on the classic work of Jewish mysticism. Insofar as it is possible, Matt has brought the unfathomable, mysterious, and poetic depths of this “book of radiance” to the English reader.

The Secret Metaphysician

Steven E. Aschheim

While a new crop of biographies about Gershom Scholem all, in one way or another, seek to account for the great man's fascination, they are themselves evidence of Scholem’s ongoing allure.

Visualizing Hasidism

Glenn Dynner

Everything contains sparks of the divine, the Ba’al Shem Tov and his disciples taught; therefore, everything—even material things—can be sanctified.

Lost from the Start: Kafka on Spinoza Street

Stuart Schoffman

Jerusalem-based writer Benjamin Balint has crafted a wise and eloquent study of Kafka around the eight-year battle in Israeli courts over Max Brod’s literary estate.

Man of Letters

Robert Alter

Adam Kirsch’s judicious selection of Lionel Trilling’s letters throws instructive light on both Trilling’s life and American intellectual culture from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Lost in America

Michael Weingrad

Two new books, different in tone but matched in caliber, show Israelis making their way as best they can in America and in life.

Torah U’Madda

Daniel Ross Goodman

Only 3 percent of American Jews are Modern Orthodox, but that number belies the movement's diversity. 

Mending Walls

Christopher DeMuth

Yoram Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism is a brilliant achievement, at once learned and sharp, philosophical and politically engaged. It is also sure to be controversial.

Zionisms, Old and New

Allan Arkush

Arthur Hertzberg's classic anthology The Zionist Idea has received a 21st century makeover. But is the new version really an improvement over the old one?  And what does Yossi Klein Halevi have to say in 2018 that hasn't been said before?  

A Normal Israel?

Shlomo Avineri

Zionism has long based its claim to sovereignty on the universal right to national self-determination, and the phrase “like all other nations” has been incorporated into Israel’s Declaration of Independence, yet the goal of “normalization” has proven to be much more complicated than most early Zionists had thought.

Talmuds and Dragons

Alan Verskin

Like the medieval literature to which it pays homage, The Inquisitor’s Tale weaves in supernatural events and divine interventions, mythic beasts and wild peoples, and even entrées into medieval theology, all liberally peppered with puns and potty humor.

Bellow, Broadway Billy, and American Jewry

Ruth R. Wisse

As Mark Cohen’s new biography reminds us, “Broadway” Billy Rose was America’s master showman for a quarter of a century. When a friend told Saul Bellow how Rose had saved a fellow Jew from an Italian prison in 1939 but refused to speak with him afterward, Bellow knew he had a story.

Art Over Vitebsk

Frances Brent

After the revolution, Marc Chagall—somewhat implausibly—became plenipotentiary for the affairs of art in the province of Vitebsk. Against all probability, the avant-garde bloomed in a provincial Russian city dominated by Jewish culture.

The Rebbe and the Professor

Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, Salo Wittmayer Baron, Ariel Evan Mayse

After the war, the great Jewish historian Salo Baron wrote to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, for help with his work on the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. As Hannah Arendt suggested in a side note to Baron, the commission probably wasn't “kosher” enough for Schneersohn, but their exchange illuminates a dark historical moment.

Tweets and Bellows

Rich Cohen

What happens when our writers and thinkers express themselves through Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter instead of on the page?