A Stone for His Slingshot
In 1948 screenwriter Ben Hecht lectured “a thousand bookies, ex-prize fighters, gamblers, jockeys, touts,” and gangsters on the burdens and responsibilities of Jewish history. The night at Slapsy Maxie’s was a big success, but the speech was lost, until now.
Are We All Khazars Now?
While it's exciting to imagine our ancestors as "Jews with swords," the science just isn't there.
At Professor Bachlam’s
A lost chapter from Agnon's final, classic novel Shira, translated here for the first time.
Dangerous Liaisons: Modern Scholars and Medieval Relations Between Jews and Christians
In the spring of 1942—which, as Mel Brooks noted, was “winter for Poland and France”—Salo Baron published a boldly revisionist article. He was thinking of present-day Europe, a 12th-century Jewish woman named Polcelina, and perhaps also his colleagues.
Dialectical Spirit
A new intellectual biography explores the thought and legacy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
Eden in a Distant Land
A new biography of Abraham Cahan unpacks how a young immigrant from Lithuania created the Forward and changed American Jewry.
History, Memory, and the Fallen Jew
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi predicted a day when the historian would give his task over to the poet. A retrospective look at his writings show his own struggle between the claims of academic history and Jewish memory.
Jokes and Justice
We were sitting in our apartment one evening when a Spanish philosopher dropped in ...
Letters, Spring 2014
Spy vs. Spy, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, Gordis' Requiem & More
Life with S’chug
Einat Admony, who was raised by an Iraqi mother and a Persian father in Bnei Brak and now runs gourmet Middle Eastern fusion restaurants, is a new wave balaboosta.