Rethinking Jabotinsky: A Talk with Hillel Halkin
The Jewish Review of Books and Yale University Press hosted an evening for Hillel Halkin’s brilliant new biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky at YIVO.
Brief Kvetches: Notes to a 19th-Century Miracle Worker
One day in the 1860s, a father burst into Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher's study house begging for help. His son's stomach was distended, and he was barking like a dog.
Haim Gouri at 90
The poet turned 90 last fall, and his latest poems are among the best he has ever written.
Heschel Transcendent
Abraham Joshua Heschel’s intellectual peers included Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. His main thought, Shai Held argues, was of transcendence.
I’m Still Here
Tuvia Reubner has said he has no homeland except perhaps his poetry. A new book expands that homeland's borders.
Killer Backdrop
If Auschwitz can have a gift shop, why can’t the Warsaw Ghetto have a love story?
Letters, Summer 2014
Reform Revisionist, Rashi's Shul, Khazars Shmazars
National Socialism, World Jewry, and the History of Being: Heidegger’s Black Notebooks
The thinking reflected in Heidegger's recently published notebooks from the 1930s is alarmingly crude. It is also much more difficult to separate from his philosophy than many would like to think.
Nostalgia for the Numinous
In the beginning there were the angry atheists. Terry Eagleton is more melancholy: “Atheism is by no means as easy as it looks.”
Peace, Plan B
Secretary of State John Kerry's attempt to get Israel and the Palestinians to a final status agreement was never going to work. What will?