Summer 2021

Letters, Summer 2021

Mitzvot and the Modern Dilemma; Tzuris Spoiled?; Hill 24’s Answer; Vilna Gaon, Zionist?

Getting Out from Under: The Philip Roth Story

Judith Shulevitz

“I don’t want you to rehabilitate me. Just make me interesting,” Philip Roth told his biographer. Has he?

The Court Jew Who Hated Kings

Cole S. Aronson

In July 1492, three months after Spain published its edict of expulsion, Abravanel sailed with tens of thousands of other refugee Jews to Italy, where the history of Sephardi Jewry and its most illustrious leader resumed on somewhat friendlier grounds.

Dionysus and the Schlemiel

Neil Arditi

If Judaism was a congenital disease, as Heinrich Heine imagined it was, it is only logical that he would eventually succumb to it.

A Murder in Miropol

Amy Newman Smith

Lower simply shows us what she saw and lets us feel the weight of it; it's almost too much to bear.

Even If the Ship Is Not Sinking

Allan Arkush

Some of the displaced persons who made their way from Germany to the new State of Israel felt more displaced in their new homeland than in the camps they left behind.

Foundation Stone

Zalman Rothschild

The meshichists remove the covering from Schneerson's red velvet chair because he will be sitting on it during prayer; they gaze at the spot where he is believed to be stationed; and they call him up to the Torah for aliyot, parting ways to make room for him as he “walks” up to the bimah.

WeShtick

Matti Friedman

Neumann’s kibbutz identity was part of his personal brand to such an extent that when puzzled onlookers spotted him walking barefoot on a Manhattan street, raising questions about his mental health, one of his publicists explained, “He is a kibbutznik.”

Lilith and the Knight

Michael Weingrad

Demons, dragons, and a “Tel Aviv hipster in King Arthur’s Court.”

Jerusalem in Albion

Philip Getz

The inclusion of Hebrew manuscripts was a priority for Thomas Bodley in 1598, when he began turning the university’s library into the institution of international and historic renown that would bear his name.

Friendship?

Liam Hoare

Margot takes in the whats and wherefores of Judaism but is never quite able to grasp the why: why someone would wish to be Modern Orthodox and live a life according to the strictures of traditional Jewish law.

The Essence of Dignity

Susannah Heschel

On Shabbos Nachamu in 1935, shortly before the Nuremberg Laws were promulgated, Rabbi Leo Baeck sent out a message of comfort to all Jewish communities and regional organizations throughout Germany,…

Time and Ink: The Minimalist Devotions of Jacob El Hanani

Adam Kirsch

The idea of a scribe who, like El Hanani, sets to work every day but never produces the same text twice—or never produces a legible text at all—would have appealed to Franz Kafka.

Of Synagogues and Seinfeld

Sarah Rindner

It's an interesting time to open a museum that argues for the interconnectedness of the Jewish world since it is virtually impossible for non-Israelis to enter the country.

Memory Palace

Sandee Brawarsky

“Dust comes from something. It shows something has happened, shows what has been disturbed or changed in the world. It marks time,” Edmund de Waal writes to the long-dead Moïse de Camondo.

Heart Work

Mark Glanville

As a successful young novelist, my father had literary friends who now included Angus Wilson, Frederic Raphael, John Wain, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. All came to tea in my nursery. Stanley Moss, my godfather, went on to make a fortune from art dealing.