Time and Ink: The Minimalist Devotions of Jacob El Hanani
The idea of a scribe who, like El Hanani, sets to work every day but never produces the same text twice—or never produces a legible text at all—would have appealed to Franz Kafka.
The Essence of Dignity
On Shabbos Nachamu in 1935, shortly before the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated, Rabbi Leo Baeck sent out a message of comfort to all Jewish communities and regional organizations throughout Germany,…
Friendship?
Margot takes in the whats and wherefores of Judaism but is never quite able to grasp the why: why someone would wish to be Modern Orthodox and live a life according to the strictures of traditional Jewish law.
Jerusalem in Albion
The inclusion of Hebrew manuscripts was a priority for Thomas Bodley in 1598, when he began turning the university’s library into the institution of international and historic renown that would bear his name.
Lilith and the Knight
Demons, dragons, and a “Tel Aviv hipster in King Arthur’s Court.”
A Murder in Miropol
Lower simply shows us what she saw and lets us feel the weight of it; it's almost too much to bear.
WeShtick
Neumann’s kibbutz identity was part of his personal brand to such an extent that when puzzled onlookers spotted him walking barefoot on a Manhattan street, raising questions about his mental health, one of his publicists explained, “He is a kibbutznik.”
Getting Out from Under: The Philip Roth Story
“I don’t want you to rehabilitate me. Just make me interesting,” Philip Roth told his biographer. Has he?
Dionysus and the Schlemiel
If Judaism was a congenital disease, as Heinrich Heine imagined it was, it is only logical that he would eventually succumb to it.
The Court Jew Who Hated Kings
In July 1492, three months after Spain published its edict of expulsion, Abravanel sailed with tens of thousands of other refugee Jews to Italy, where the history of Sephardi Jewry and its most illustrious leader resumed on somewhat friendlier grounds.