Hillel Halkin

Pessimism Not Despair: A Reply to My Critics
"Just as the turmoil aroused by Israel’s new government has overlooked the Palestinian issue while concentrating on a more immediate crisis, so have the responses to my article."—Halkin writes back.

On That Distant Day
Benjamin Netanyahu is back in the Prime Minister’s chair, but where are the factions who put him there taking Israel?

Working One’s Way Out
"When I first read Winter Vigil over a year ago, I was swept away; I hadn’t read any contemporary writing as good in a long time. I hadn’t known Steve Kogan could write like that. I hadn’t, it turned out, known very much about him."

A Complex Network of Pipes
You couldn’t know Yehuda Amichai without being struck by the casual way in which original and sometimes startling metaphors dropped from him in ordinary conversation. It wasn’t done for effect. It was just the way his mind worked. One thing made him think of another and what it made him think of was generally something that would not have occurred to anyone else.
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.

Wisdom and Wars
If it were fiction, Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom would be the greatest English war novel.
Poets of the Tribe
The story of 12 Hebrew poets—in America.
King James: The Harold Bloom Version
There may be a thousand facets to the Torah, but does Harold Bloom simply misunderstand the King James Bible?

Law in the Desert
Studying the weekly portion with Jerome, Nachmanides, and others, the seemingly tedious parts of Exodus become compelling.
Endless Devotion
Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks' new translation of the siddur moves Hillel Halkin to reconsider Jewish prayer.