Journeys Without End
For some three decades Lionel and Diana Trilling shared a limelight that was not quite identical but never entirely separate.
Letters, Fall 2017
Toxic Brew, Open And Shut?, Grudge Match, and Fundamental Principles
Like an Echo of Silence
Lea Goldberg’s poetic voice didn’t project outward; it drew the reader in, inviting intimate conversation.
Patriotism and Its Discontents
While many Jews embraced the Russian revolutionary cause from the very beginning—four of the seven members of the first Bolshevik Politburo were Jews—the revolution did not embrace them for long.
Perish the Thought
Bruno Chaouat dares to ask whether, given the moral autism of so many of Theory’s luminaries when facing the basic political questions of our time, his own romance with it has been a similar waste.
Power and the Voice of Conscience: A Lost Radio Talk
On January 19, 1947 a young rabbi named Emil Fackenheim got behind a microphone to give a searing radio address about the Jewish refugees from Europe. He himself had been one only four years earlier.
Straying from the Fold?
Are typical Jewish converts ensnared in the nets of Protestant missionaries “swindlers, thieves, drunkards, whores, schlemiels, schlemazels, nudniks, and no-goodniks”?
Swimming in an Inky Sea
Ilana Kurshan, a hyper-literary, ideologically egalitarian, hopeless romantic (in her words), doesn’t fit the typical profile of a Daf Yomi participant.
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.