Fall 2013

Letters, Fall 2013

Superpowered Thinking, Kant’s Dignity, Proust’s Jewish Melodies, & More

The Day School Tuition Crisis: A Short History

In 1935, Israel Chipkin wrote that day schools were “financially prohibitive” for most Jews. The more things change . . .

Fathers & Sons

Yehudah Mirsky

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?

The Hunter

Rich Cohen

James Salter has been justly celebrated as a composer of gorgeous prose, and his new late-life novel All That Is confirms his reputation as a writer's writer. How much of his artistic vision is predicated on being James Salter rather than James Horowitz?

Jake in the Box

Curt Leviant

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.

Hebraic America

Matthew Holbreich

When Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin sat down to design the Great Seal of the United States they both turned to the Bible.

Karl Marx, Bourgeois Revolutionary

Abigail Green

Jonathan Sperber's new biography paints Karl Marx as a surprisingly conventional 19th-century paterfamilias.

A Student-Centered Tradition

Mark Gottlieb

In the early 1930s Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira wrote that the most important thing to teach children was that "they themselves are their own educators."

On Not Bringing Up Baby

Abby W. Schachter

What happens when the rising cost of raising children meets the downward pressure on reproduction?

All-American, Post-Everything

Allan Arkush

Shaul Magid argues that Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is the Rebbe for post-ethnic America. But is cosmotheism a good idea?

Exogamy Explored

Sylvia Barack Fishman

Naomi Shaefer Riley brings new data and her own personal experience to the issue of intermarriage.

Fiction and Forgiveness

Michael Weingrad

Dara Horn’s novel goes down to Egypt to guide its perplexed characters through a Joseph story.

Who Owns Margot?

Nadia Kalman

What if Anne Frank’s sister had survived Bergen-Belsen? Interesting, but . . .

Meanwhile, on a Quiet Street in Cleveland

Eitan Kensky

Two Jewish kids from Cleveland created Superman. Why does the Man of Steel still fascinate us?

Athens or Sparta? A Response

Patrick Tyler

Patrick Tyler accuses Benny Morris of being unfair in his attacks on Fortress Israel.

Athens or Sparta? A Rejoinder

Benny Morris

Accused by Patrick Tyler of unfairness, Morris presses on.

The Joy of Being Delivered from Jewish Schools Results in a Stiff Foot

Solomon Maimon

Before he became a brilliant, radical, and disreputable Enlightenment philosopher, Solomon Maimon was a miserable cheder student.

Notice Posted on the Door of the Kelm Talmud Torah Before the High Holidays

Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, Geoffrey Claussen

In the 1860s, Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv tried to found a new kind of yeshiva in which students would devote significant time to thinking about their moral lives.

Hebrew School Days

Abraham Socher

“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 . . .”