Sephardi Lives: From Ottoman Salonica to Rosario, Argentina
Singing women spark indignation in Salonica, a change of seasons in Argentina requires rabbinic expertise, and Jews in the Ottoman army get fat and happy.
Shaking Up Israel’s Kosher Certification System
On belly dancing, big government, and the issues of synagogue and state raised by recent attempts at kashrut reform in Israel.
Something Borrowed
Boris Fishman's debut novel A Replacement Life has a talented author, hefty themes, a clever and wide-ranging conceit, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Sometimes a Bag Is Just a Bag
Daphne Merkin's new collection is signature Merkin: funny, smartly written, and utterly self-indulgent.
The Banality of Evil: The Demise of a Legend
As The New York Times noted, Bettina Stangneth’s newly translated book Eichmann Before Jerusalem finally and completely undermines Hannah Arendt’s famous “Banality of Evil” thesis.
The Digression
A doctor walks into the examination room and tells his patient that the drugs aren’t working and there isn’t anything else to try . . .
The Ethics of Protective Edge
How does one deal with Hamas, an enemy that has eliminated any trace of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, except for the purposes of propaganda?
Thoroughly Modern Maimonides?
Three recent books elucidate what, if anything, Maimonides has to say to us today.
Valhalla in Flames
To give their "Thousand Year Reich" a patina of tradition, the Nazis co-opted the German and Western European cultural canon.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Stepan Bandera: A Rejoinder to Dovid Katz
Konstanty Gebert responds to Dovid Katz's critique.