A Little Arabic within Our Hebrew
Tracing lines of a linguistic heritage through Hebrew poetry.
Bind Them as a Sign: A Photo Essay
A Hasidic-owned, bicycle-powered tefillin factory in Krakow, Poland.
Bookstore or Beis Medresh
How I learned to stop worrying and love to browse.
Coming of Age in the Sephardi Diaspora
Elizabeth Graver’s new novel shines a light on the Sephardi experience.
Dead Sea Walking
Shay Rabineau had a simple plan: circle the Dead Sea on foot in two weeks while navigating treacherous heights, marshy flats, military checkpoints, and ad hoc baptisms. What could go wrong?
Freud as Talmudist
We now understand Sigmund Freud as an anxious Jewish humanist, not the intrepid scientific investigator he thought himself to be. Does that help explain why his interpretations seem so talmudic?
History—and Israel—from the Outside In
Chaim Weizmann's outsider view of the Yishuv often led to conflict with the Zionist leaders based in British Mandatory Palestine. But it was precisely that perspective that present-day historians (and arguably Israelis) would do well to recover.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence: A Biography
Who wrote Israel's founding document and how does it express Israel’s values?
Letters, Spring 2023
Cliff-Hangers When I first read Hillel Halkin’s assertion in “On That Distant Day” (Winter 2023) that “for years now, Israel has seemed to me like a man sleepwalking toward a cliff” and “now we’ve fallen from it,” I thought it was excessive, though I shared his concerns about the Likud’s coalition partners (Zionist theocrats, anti-Zionist free-riders). Writing now, in the…
Nothing but Literature
Kafka’s unabridged diaries are, for the first time, available in English. What do they teach us about a man who was a lacuna of himself?