Features
Welcome to the Jewish Review of Books
Welcome to the first issue of the Jewish Review of Books.
What the U.S. Can and Can’t Do in the Middle East
Why the realists are being unrealistic about American power in the Middle East.
Endless Devotion
Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks' new translation of the siddur moves Hillel Halkin to reconsider Jewish prayer.
Requiem for a Luftmentsh
Were Saul Bellow and his friend Isaac Rosenfeld the last Jewish intellectuals of their kind?
Why There Is No Jewish Narnia
So why don’t Jews write more fantasy literature? And a different, deeper but related question: why are there no works of modern fantasy that are profoundly Jewish in the way that, say, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is Christian?
Reviews
A Novel of Unbelief
Religion, faith, and the search for tenure at Harvard underpin a comic novel by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
God and Idolatry
Saving God may look Maimonidean on the surface, but Rambam would never agree with Johnston's basic conclusions.
Walking the Green Line
New books about the settlers and the settlements and depth and nuance to the discussions about their existence.
Prospects for American Judaism
A new book traces the path of American Jews from participation to affiliation.
Faith in Doubt
Can doubt provide the space that allows secular and religious Jews to coexist in Israel?
Old-New Debate
Theodor Herzl is indisputably Israel’s principal Founding Father. He was not the first person in modern times to call for the creation of a Jewish state, but he summoned…
Lost in Translation
The novelist Jonathan Rosen has written evocatively of the parallels between rabbinic literature and the World Wide Web: “When I look at a page of Talmud and see all…
In Whose Image?
On the spectrum between animal and divine, where do human beings fall?
Ordinary Memory
“I wanted to write an integrated history,” Saul Friedländer told a magazine in 2007, in an interview marking the long-awaited concluding installment of his Holocaust study Nazi Germany and…
Appelfeld in Bloom
Israeli author Aharon Applefeld sifts through memories to understand the traumas of his past.
Poems Like Mountains
“I was a year old,” Rivka Miriam says, “and my father would hold me in his arms and throw me up and down and I laughed and laughed and…
Readings
The Idea of Abrahamic Religions: A Qualified Dissent
What is "Abrahamic" about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
Discrimination and Identity in London: The Jewish Free School Case
How Britain's highest court misunderstands Judaism.
The Arts
No Sex in the City: On Srugim
A new Israeli TV show chronicles single life in Jerusalem.
Bob Dylan: Messiah or Escape Artist?
“Who was or is Robert Zimmerman, called Bob Dylan?” Is he a Jew?
Lost & Found
Cannon Fire Over Sarajevo and Sin in Ansbach: A Passage from Rabbi Jacob Emden’s 18th Century Memoir
Jacob Emden, Jacob J. Schacter
Jacob Emden get a deserved, if belated, translation into English.
Last Word
Crumb’s Genesis
Harvey Pekar's take on Robert Crumb's illustrated book Genesis.
Past Issues
Issue No. 55
Fall 2023
Issue No. 54
Summer 2023
Issue No. 53
Spring 2023
Issue No. 52