I Have Come to My Garden
Without the Torah, says Rabbi Akiva, we would still be able to discover all its truths by delving deeply into the words of the Song of Songs.
Intense Listening: The Poetry of Harvey Shapiro
Harvey Shapiro, who grew up in an observant Jewish family, was a connoisseur of distances and silences.
Islamic Jihad, Zionism, and Espionage in the Great War
A century ago, the Holy Land seems to have been full of European adventurers, archaeologists, would-be diplomats, and spies—sometimes all combined in the same person. Take, for instance, Max von Oppenheim . . .
Israeli Strategy for a New Middle East
Ninety-nine years ago, in the middle of World War I, a French diplomat and a British politico secretly redrew the map of the Middle East. The state system they helped engineer lasted a surprisSyingly long time, but it’s gone now. Israel’s new strategic landscape must be rethought.
It Is Either Serious or It Isn’t
A poem by Chana Bloch is like a stone thrown deep into the well of experience.
Letters, Fall 2015
Anti-Semitic Spelling?, Render Unto Caesar, Implausible Etrog?, Just-So Question
Members of the Tribe
If an Israeli ambassador to the United States can’t consume ham in public, he may still have to engage in something like pork-barrel politics.
On Old Stones, a Black Cat, and a New Zion
There is a legend that Prague’s Altneuschul was built on a foundation of stones from the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.
Something Off
There was a sense of oddness about Bruno Shulz that German-Jewish writer Maxim Biller exploits in his new novella, Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz.
The Apocryphal Psalms of David 1:15–20
In 1902 Abraham Harkavy published two previously unknown psalms and parts of two others from a manuscript in the Cairo Geniza. They may date back to the Second Temple.