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.
Great Jews in Robes
If Merrick Garland had been successfully confirmed for the seat now occupied by Neil Gorsuch, Jews would have been just one vote shy of constituting a majority on the court.
Hashtag Holocaust
Memorials remain, unmoved and unchanged, by the inevitable erosion of memory.
Inside or Outside?
After the discoveries of the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars of Judaism slowly began to reconstruct the 400-year period separating the latest parts of the Hebrew Bible from the earliest rabbinic compilations.
Letters, Summer 2017
Ben-Gurion's Yiddish, Foucault on Yom Kippur, Rabin's Solution?, The Lamp and the Flame
On Agnonizing in English
For the Hebrew reader, S. Y. Agnon is not merely canonical, he stands almost outside of time.
Purity and Obscurity
When contemporary Jews of priestly lineage avoid cemeteries, when ordinary Jews wash their hands before eating, or immerse themselves in ritual baths, they are acting according to the dictates of an ancient system.
The Closing of the American Mind Now
Thirty years ago, a book was published that hit, in the words of the New York Times, “with the approximate force and effect of what electric shock-therapy must be like.” How has it held up? And what does that have to do with the Bible?
The End of Europe as We Know It?
Why does Europe, the late 20th century’s greatest success story, now look so chaotic?