The Lowells and the Jews
Robert Lowell, the most famous poet in America, icon of the antiwar movement, consummate Boston Brahmin, was especially glad to speak with a Jewish group because, he drawled, “I’m an eighth, you know.”
Upon Such Sacrifices: King Lear and the Binding of Isaac
How Shakespeare helps us think about the akedah, and vice versa.
What If Everyone Is Right?
What If Everyone Is Right?
“Where They Have Burned Books, They Will End Up Burning People”
The surprising source for Heine’s prophetic remark that “where they have burned books, they will end up burning people” is a play about the fate of Muslims in Christian Spain.
“I Am Impossible”: An Exchange Between Jacob Taubes and Arthur A. Cohen
In the summer of 1977, two old friends ran into each other in front of a Paris bookstore and found themselves arguing about Simone Weil, Judaism, and their lives.
A “New History” and Old Facts
Fifty years after the conflict, Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East attempts to upend our understanding of the hostilities.
A Dashing Medievalist
Ernst Katorowicz had great courage and old-world personal charm—his Berkeley students were mesmerized by him.
Crazy-Beautiful Startup
Although The Wedding Plan will inevitably be marketed and discussed as a wacky romantic comedy, there is no real male lead.
East Meets West
Following the Six-Day War, the East German government and the West German far left demonized Israel time and again, often vilely equating it with the worst thing in their own nation’s history: Nazism.
Fauda: The Wages of Chaos
Fauda, which takes its name from the Arabic word for chaos, opens in an adrenaline rush of noise, confusion, and jagged camerawork.