Tragedy and Comedy in Black and White
Lately it seems to be the season of haredim on screen. Sarah Rindner's immersion in this very particular oeuvre began with Shtisel, the 2013 runaway hit Israeli TV series, which depicts a haredi family in Jerusalem in all of its complicated, charming dysfunction.
The Home Front
Eating very long breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with dozens of aging members of the Greatest Generation was the best part of Arkush's teaching experience.
Books vs. Children
"Apparently it is very troubling for children to see their parents working, at least doing the kind of work that does not make itself visibly obvious."
Yiddish Heroism, Hebrew Tears
For Avraham Sutzkever, life and work were not even slightly separate, since his was a life not merely shaped by poetry in a metaphorical sense but literally saved by it, when a poem of his produced an airplane.
Chaim of Arabia: The First Arab-Zionist Alliance
Chaim Weizmann regarded his 1919 agreement with Emir Faisal as an epoch-making treaty. That didn’t turn out to be the case, but a century later an Arab-Zionist alliance may be reemerging.
Who Tried to Kill Spinoza?
According to early biographers, somebody tried to kill Spinoza on the streets of Amsterdam. Is the story true, and, if so, who were his attackers?
Doron Rabinovici and the Crisis of European Jewish Identity
To live in Vienna as a Jew is also to be reminded that those who perpetrated the Shoah were defeated yet, unlike the victims, were able to resume their lives afterwards.
Freethinker
Melanie Phillips had stumbled into the culture wars by, as she herself describes it, “the staggering tactic of actually observing what was going on.”
Lenin and Maimonides
Lenin and Maimonides, Communist leaflets and Hebrew verse: What could be more different, in language, in sensibility, in world view?
Workday Jews
In their respective books, Chad Alan Goldberg and Eliyahu Stern address the question of whether the Jews are the quintessentially modern people or a people who came to modernity late and with a sudden shock. They reach very different conclusions.