When Freedom Began to Ring
How the land of opportunity became the opportune land for Jews to thrive.
Where She Has Gone
The book of Ruth has inspired Oscar-winning films, medieval kabbalists, rugged kibbutzniks, and gifted artists. What is it about this book that makes it so engaging?
Walking Upright
“The book’s greatest contribution is fighting Jewish historical amnesia.”
Lost in Translation: Song of Songs and Passover
Why is this Targum different from all other Targums?
The First Maggid—How Memory Made the Jews
3,500 years ago, Israelite parents explained wonders to their children and created the very first Maggid story.
History and Polemic: An Exchange
Eric Alterman and Allan Arkush have a heated exchange on Israel, American Jewry, and the role of a historian.
A Rejoinder
I didn’t know that there was anyone left in the academic world who held as simplistic view of history as the one that Eric Alterman espouses in his response to my review (“Context and Content,” Winter 2023). The historian’s job, he says, “is not to voice disapproval or approval” of anything. Consequently, he endorses “nothing and no one in this…
We Are Really Not One
Allan Arkush must be developing quite a reputation for himself as JRB’s chief of its pro-Israel thought police—I suppose I should be honored. Joshua Cohen went on to receive a Pulitzer Prize for a recent book for which Arkush attempted a no-less comically inept attack in these same pages. Sadly, he has not improved with practice. I suppose it’s possible…
Purim at JRB
This Purim at the Jewish Review of Books, we’re turning things a little upside down. A Jewish review of books? Why stop there? We’ve collected three fun and funny reviews…
A Comic Megillah?
Megillat Esther has long balanced the comic and the graphic in its content and interpretations. A new Koren graphic novel takes the challenge a bit more literally.