Agnon, Oz, and Me
Over the years, I’ve spoken privately with several Israeli novelists but with only two of the internationally famous ones. And these very brief conversations took place more than 40 years…
A Good Second Choice
Yirimiyahu be-Tzion is a solid work of intellectual history, devoted above all to understanding Judah Magnes as he understood himself, sympathetic but honest, and attentive to the weaknesses as well as the strengths of his thinking.
A Pinch of Levity
Is it true that three people are required to perfect a joke: one to tell it, one to get it, and a third not to get it? Stuart Schoffman tracks a single Jewish joke through multiple tellings.
For the Many, Not for the Jew
The anti-Zionism embraced by far-left activists who flocked to Labour after Jeremy Corbyn’s election has merged with ancient European Jew-hatred to create a new and virulent strain of anti-Semitism.
The Old Country, Twice Removed
My grandfather had a way of mentioning the Kiev guberniya (province) that made it sound to me, when I was a boy, like it was our place in the Old Country—and more than half a century later, it still does.
Complicated Community: A Conversation with a Jewish Chavista
What happens to a Jewish supporter of Hugo Chavez when the revolution descends into chaos?
The Hebrew Teacher
After his baptism, Judah Monis observed the Christian Sabbath on Saturdays, giving rise to suspicion, and for 38 years taught mandatory Hebrew to rebellious students.
Leviticus on the Fourth of July
Biblical narratives and imagery have played a surprisingly large, even outsized, role in the formation of the American national consciousness and institutions.
In Pursuit of Wholeness: The Book of Ruth in Modern Literature
While not the most dramatic of all the biblical stories, the quietly moving book of Ruth, which we read on Shavuot, continues to resonate in Western literature.
Revisiting Herman Wouk’s City Boy
Remembering Herman Wouk's "gentle mockery at the shopworn pretensions of bohemian poseurs and ethnic Jews passing as nonhyphenated Americans."