Spring 2014

Letters, Spring 2014

Spy vs. Spy, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, Gordis' Requiem & More

A Stone for His Slingshot

Ben Hecht, Stuart Schoffman

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.

Our Master, May He Live

Ivan G. Marcus

Rashi's commentary on the Chumash isn't just about textual puzzles, it's about God's love for the Jewish people. So argues Avraham Grossman in a new biography.

Eden in a Distant Land

Sol Stern

A new biography of Abraham Cahan unpacks how a young immigrant from Lithuania created the Forward and changed American Jewry.

Dialectical Spirit

Allan Nadler

A new intellectual biography explores the thought and legacy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.

Original Sins

Ronald Radosh

John Judis book about Truman's Middle East policy isn't a rant, but it's not exactly history either.

Politics and Prophecy

Elliott Abrams

Ari Shavit, the Israeli prophet-journalist, offers both rebuke of the past and warnings for the future, but unlike prophets of old, he has no solutions for the way forward.

Nation and Narrative

Alan Mintz

The sons of Israel, from the kibbutz to the hesder yeshiva, came together to liberate Jerusalem in 1967. Yossi Klein Halevi portrays Israel by tracing their diverging paths in the years since.

Life with S’chug

Talya Halkin

Einat Admony, who was raised by an Iraqi mother and a Persian father in Bnei Brak and now runs gourmet Middle Eastern fusion restaurants, is a new wave balaboosta.

History, Memory, and the Fallen Jew

Steven E. Aschheim

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi predicted a day when the historian would give his task over to the poet. A retrospective look at his writings show his own struggle between the claims of academic history and Jewish memory.

The Living Waters of History

Amy Newman Smith

A historical novel about the Spanish Expulsion tells us as much about current reading trends as it does the lives of Jews in 15th-century Spain.

The Anti-Jewish Problem

Steven T. Katz

In the competition that took place between Judaism and nascent Christianity, only one could be correct.  Thus, anti-Judaism became central to the Western tradition.

Are We All Khazars Now?

Shaul Stampfer

While it's exciting to imagine our ancestors as "Jews with swords," the science just isn't there.

The Good, The Bad, and The Unending

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

Have (more or less) real historians ever been as central to a Hollywood blockbuster as they are to George Clooney’s The Monuments Men? Our reviewer, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld has something to say about the history. Also Cate Blanchett.

Dangerous Liaisons: Modern Scholars and Medieval Relations Between Jews and Christians

Elliott Horowitz

In the spring of 1942—which, as Mel Brooks noted, was “winter for Poland and France”—Salo Baron published a boldly revisionist article. He was thinking of present-day Europe, a 12th-century Jewish woman named Polcelina, and perhaps also his colleagues.

At Professor Bachlam’s

S.Y. Agnon, Jeffrey Saks

A lost chapter from Agnon's final, classic novel Shira, translated here for the first time.

Jokes and Justice

Allan Arkush

We were sitting in our apartment one evening when a Spanish philosopher dropped in ...