Letters, Fall 2022
Day School and State; An Apocryphal Footnote; Confirmed as Drowned, and more
Missing Notes
There was a time when Jewish artists set the tone for North African music, but now only echoes remain.
No Balm
A new book on talmudic medicine illustrates the ills of modern academia, argues Shai Secunda.
People of the Book World
"The Jewish market has become quite a good one,” a Knopf editor observed; even the “goy polloi” were buying, wrote another staffer.
Radically Enlightened Jews
Jonathan Israel is a minyan of modern revolutionaries.
The Blessings of Manasia
His father recited Modeh Ani every morning and ordered a set of tefillin from Mumbai. Unaware that they were meant to be worn and not merely kept, he put them away on a shelf.
The Most Important Word in the World
For a moment, a literary giant and talmudic genius sparred over the implications of a biblical phrase.
The Protocols of Neoliberalism
Baram’s characters are righteously indignant at the system and determined to bring it down.
The Wry Comedy of A. B. Yehoshua
Remembering the ebullient spirit and radical fiction of A. B. Yehoshua.
Think Over My Lesson and Try to Destroy It
When Levinas met a vagabond called Chouchani, he told a friend, “I cannot tell what he knows, all I can say is that all that I know, he knows.” Now that we have dozens of Chouchani’s notebooks, can we finally know what he knew?