Ten Duel Commandments
Alexander Hamilton was, as the song goes, a “bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman.” Was he also a Jew? Well, he did go to Hebrew School in the West Indies, but ...
Letters, Fall 2021
We and I; It's a Novel: An Exchange
Sephardi Soap
With the runaway success of the novel The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, a television adaptation was all but inevitable, and the decision of Yes Studios to invest record amounts of cash in the show, while eyebrow raising, is also unsurprising.
It’s a Novel: An Exchange
A couple of weeks ago, Allan Arkush wrote that it was “hard to even list all the things . . . that ring false,” in Joshua Cohen’s widely praised new novel. The author vehemently defended himself on both literary and historical grounds against what he called “a review like a pogrom.”
Fictional Revisionism
The first time I picked up Joshua Cohen’s new novel, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, I put it down when I reached page eighty-four.
No Less Lost
The past can be exhilarating, and it can be quicksand. So discovers Menachem Kaiser in Plunder, his expansive, complicated, generous memoir.
Foundation Stone
The meshichists remove the covering from Schneerson's red velvet chair because he will be sitting on it during prayer; they gaze at the spot where he is believed to be stationed; and they call him up to the Torah for aliyot, parting ways to make room for him as he “walks” up to the bimah.
Even If the Ship Is Not Sinking
Some of the displaced persons who made their way from Germany to the new State of Israel felt more displaced in their new homeland than in the camps they left behind.
Heart Work
As a successful young novelist, my father had literary friends who now included Angus Wilson, Frederic Raphael, John Wain, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. All came to tea in my nursery. Stanley Moss, my godfather, went on to make a fortune from art dealing.
Letters, Summer 2021
Mitzvot and the Modern Dilemma; Tzuris Spoiled?; Hill 24’s Answer; Vilna Gaon, Zionist?