Letters
Letters, Winter 2011
God, Torah, and Israel: An Exchange
Features
Between New York and Jerusalem
For twenty-five years, Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt, two of the most gifted, influential, and opinionated Jewish intellectuals of the 20th century, maintained a remarkable correspondence. Recently published, these illuminating letters provide a rare glimpse into a relationship that has too often been described as adverserial.
Simon Wiesenthal and the Ethics of History
Was Simon Wiesenthal an intrepid hunter of mass murderers? Or was he in fact more of a charlatan than a hero? Tom Segev's new biography of the most successful—and controversial—Nazi-hunter raises more questions than it cares to answer.
Reviews
ArtScroll’s Empire
How did a Brooklyn-based, Orthodox publishing house corner the market on religious texts in America?
Jocasta Speaks
The Jewish woman, before feminism.
Seeds of Subversion
The "Other" Jewish tradition.
Sole Searcher
The author of The Dybbuk lives on in a new biography.
The Novelist and the Physicist
A celebrated Jewsh novelist steps into the religion-science debate.
Minyan 2.0
The next big thing in prayer.
The Man’s Learning Moves Me
Isaac Casaubon, the Hellenist who loved Hebrew.
No Joke
Roth's new novel takes surprising turns on familiar territory.
The Language of Tradition
On tradition as a first language.
The Red Beret and the Rabbis
What has happened to the Religious Zionist rabbinate?
One State?
Sari Nusseibeh's recent book is a new formulation of an old proposal.
The Future Past Perfect
Treasure and tragedy in the letters of Stefan and Lotte Zweig, one of the most famous literary couples of the early 20th century.
Letters From Chicago
One of the many pleasures of the recently published Saul Bellow: Letters is how it reacquaints us with Bellow's wry, poignant, infectiously erudite voice. This is all the more surprising because he wasn't, or at least so he insisted, a natural-born letter writer. As in his literature, Bellow's language is so stunning that one wonders whether he was writing to both his correspondents, and to readers like us.
In Brief
In Brief, Winter 2011
Judaism and Americanism, Young Tel Aviv, Psalms in the Arctic, Haym Solomon, and Funnyman
The Arts
Living Postcards
YIVO/Yeshiva University Museum's recent exhibit of pre-war home videos provides an extraordinary view into the lives of ordinary people.
What . . . Him Worry?
How did Abraham Jaffee, raised in the shtetl of Zarasai, became one of MAD magazine's most prolific and recognizable cartoonists?
Lost & Found
Where To: America or Palestine? Simon Dubnov’s Memoir of Emigration Debates in Tsarist Russia
Dubnov's magisterial autobiography, written while Dubnov was in exile from both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, takes the reader on a deeply personal journey through nearly a century of upheaval for the Jews of Eastern Europe. A new translation.
Last Word
Translating and Remembering Chaim Grade
A memoir of faith, literature, and chickens.
Past Issues
Issue No. 58
Summer 2024
Issue No. 57
Spring 2024
Issue No. 56
Winter 2024
Issue No. 55