Ritchie’s Boys and the Men from Zion
Our appreciation for stories of Jewish bravery during World War II sometimes obscures the fact that as a group Jews were powerless, reduced to begging others for a chance to bear arms.
Succession, Secession!
The notion of zera kodesh, “holy seed,” appears only twice in the Bible, both times in reference to the people of Israel as a whole. For Hasidim, however, it has a more restricted meaning.
The Family Heretic
Mark Mazower’s What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home belongs to a newish genre: the Jewish family memoir that is an act of filiopiety but also illuminates broad historical themes.
The Last Bedtime Story: Roz Chast’s Sort-of Tour Guide
Realizing that her daughter knows nothing of the urban wilderness her mother once inhabited, Roz Chast takes it upon herself to bequeath her accumulated wisdom in the method most natural to her, a comic book.
The Many Dybbuks of Romain Gary
Romain Gary—a Lithuanian Jew who regarded himself a Frenchman par excellence—emerges in a recent memoir as a master of self-invention and (just as immoderate) verbal invention, a chameleon of pseudonyms, a man of irreconcilable contradictions, divided against himself.
The Modern Crisis of Moral Thought: An Exchange
Abraham Socher's pre-Yom Kippur assessment of the possibility of true repentance led to a discussion on the mussarist's answer (or non-answer) on moral choices.
The Ruined House (An Excerpt)
In 2014 Ruby Namdar won the prestigious Sapir Prize for his novel Ha-bayit asher necherav, the first time in the award’s history that it went to a writer not living in Israel. On November 7, 2017, Harper released it under the title The Ruined House: A Novel, in an English translation by Hillel Halkin. The Jewish Review of Books is pleased to present this excerpt from the novel’s opening.
Afghan Treasure
Sometime in the 11th century, a distraught, young Jewish Afghan man named Yair sent a painful letter to his brother-in-law. Life had dealt Yair a tough hand, or maybe it was just his own bad choices.
Businesswomen Before Bar Kokhba
Why did a Jewish woman living 30 years (around 135 C.E.) after a set of real estate contracts were executed and with no obvious connection to the named parties have them in her satchel when she fled Ein Gedi?
Distant Cousins
None of these four novels by American Jewish writers is fully at home in Israel—they’re more like Mars orbiters than rovers.