Letters

Features

Before the Big Bang

Daniel C. Matt

Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss is quite sure he knows how the universe began. Novelist Alan Lightman takes a wild narrative guess. But where does the Kabbalah stand?

War & Peace & Judaism

Allan Arkush

  Robert Eisen was walking to campus on 9/11 when he saw a dark cloud above the Pentagon. Alick Isaacs fought for the IDF in Lebanon. Their experiences prompted them to rethink peace and Judaism.

Reviews

The Mighty Jacobson

Adam Kirsch

  For an American Jew to read the magnificently funny and serious Howard Jacobson is to understand just how different the situation of English Jews is from their own.  

Dust-to-Dust Song

Paul Reitter

 Nelly Sachs was 50 years old when she fled the Nazis with her mother in 1940. Few would have perdicted that she would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature twenty-six years later.

Muddling Through

Anne Trubek

 In his new book about an Upper West Side Jewish family, Joshua Henkin proves himself as a skillful writer, alternately witty and moving.

Readings

Borges, the Jew

Ilan Stavans

Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian Nobel Prize-winning writer was captivated by Judaism. In 1934, he lamented, "hope is dimming that I will ever be able to discover my link to the Table of the Breads and the Sea of Bronze; to Heine, Gleizer, and the ten Sephiroth; to Ecclesiastes and Chaplin."

The Arts

Matisse and His Jewish Patrons

Catherine C. Bock-Weiss

Some of Henri Matisse's earliest and most committed supporters (and buyers) were Jewish. That might explain why Histoires Juives, a book of Yiddish jokes in French translation, and other Jewish items can be found in his paintings.

Homage to Mahj

Amy Newman Smith

A traveling exhibit attempts to explain the Jewish fascination with Mah Jongg, a favorite past-time of mid-century Jewish suburbia, Jewish country clubs, and Catskill resorts.

Lost & Found

Last Word

Past Issues