The Quality of Rachmones
Howard Jacobson's Shylock Is My Name is dead serious and very funny, high criticism and low comedy.
A Cipher and His Songs
Avraham Halfi faced outward, a gifted comic performer, and inward, a lyric poet of resonant privacy.
A Harem of Translators
Singer insisted that all foreign-language translations of his work be based on the English versions. And most of them were done by young women who closer to typist-editors than true translators.
A Party in Boisk
The bodily joy a group of Boiskers took in fulfilling the commandment to study Torah is still surprising, and that may have something to do with the Torah they chose to study.
A Walk in Jerusalem
Jews and Arabs live separately and are rarely friends, but they deal with each other constantly. The city can’t function otherwise. A walk in the Old City under a cloud of unease.
Letters, Winter 2016
JTS, American Judaism, and Conditional Synagogues
Not by the Rivers of Babylon
It turns out that Israel sits on a “saddle point” between four weather systems. The rabbis of the Talmud didn’t know that, but they did have some interesting things to say about rain.
Oh, the Humanity!
Would the demise or even disappearance of human beings be, on the whole, a good thing. Yuval Noah Harari seems to think so, or is at least willing to entertain the thought.
Re-Intoxicated by God
The way out is clearly marked: Intense Talmud study leads to intense study of science and philosophy. Spinoza was (in fact, sometimes still is) a crucial step along the path out.
Reader, I Adopted Him
Maya Arad's latest work is minor literature in the sense that Jane Austen—a model for Arad—is minor because she focuses on human character rather than on the Napoleonic wars and the religious crisis of the Enlightenment.