Athens or Sparta? A Response
Patrick Tyler accuses Benny Morris of being unfair in his attacks on Fortress Israel.
Exogamy Explored
Naomi Shaefer Riley brings new data and her own personal experience to the issue of intermarriage.
Fathers & Sons
This summer, as the current Askhenazi chief rabbi was being investigated for corruption, and issues of religion and state dominated public debate, new Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis were elected. The process was messy, complicated, and ugly. The result? Sixty-eight votes apiece for the sons of two previous chief rabbis. What does a broken rabbinate mean for Israel?
Fiction and Forgiveness
Dara Horn’s novel goes down to Egypt to guide its perplexed characters through a Joseph story.
Hebraic America
When Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin sat down to design the Great Seal of the United States they both turned to the Bible.
Hebrew School Days
“Of course, I had myself gone to Hebrew school—that’s what we always called it though very little Hebrew was ever learned—through most of elementary school. I’d walk the five blocks down Bancroft . . .”
Jake in the Box
The patriarch Jacob was the father of twelve tribes and (eventually) fêted by Pharaoh. But, as Yair Zakovitch shows, the Bible does not portray a happy man.
Karl Marx, Bourgeois Revolutionary
Jonathan Sperber's new biography paints Karl Marx as a surprisingly conventional 19th-century paterfamilias.
Letters, Fall 2013
Superpowered Thinking, Kant’s Dignity, Proust’s Jewish Melodies, & More
Meanwhile, on a Quiet Street in Cleveland
Two Jewish kids from Cleveland created Superman. Why does the Man of Steel still fascinate us?