Winter 2023

Letters, Winter 2023

From the Editor: As we were closing this issue, I was, like you, talking with friends about the recent Israeli election—the usual conversations, half potted punditry (at least on my…

On That Distant Day

Hillel Halkin

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

Like a Son of Man

John J. Collins

Who gets to anoint the Messiah?

The (Railroad) Baron

Abigail Green

How the man who built the Orient Express lost track of his legacy.

A Perfect Spy?

A.E. Smith

Was the original James Bond a Jew from Odessa?

Context and Content

Allan Arkush

How can Zionism’s biggest critics know so little about its history?

The Fierce Lust for Contemplation

Shai Secunda

How did traditional yeshivas become fertile ground for radical literature?

Life and Text

Ariel Evan Mayse

Should we read our own experiences like the Zohar reads the Torah?

Tradition and Imagination

Michal Leibowitz

Jewish fiction’s long memory.

Brotherhood

Malka Z. Simkovich

How did the world's most antisemitic play become a symbol of positive Christian-Jewish relations? Karma Ben Johanan's new book explores an evolving dynamic.

To Whom It May Concern: Mordecai Kaplan the Diarist

Jenna Weissman Joselit

The father of Reconstructionist Judaism left behind a towering legacy, and seventy-seven years of personal Journals—a tightly scrawled window into his mind.

George Lichtheim’s Marxmanship

Benjamin Balint

The brief, wondrous life of a renegade intellectual.

Spielberg’s Fable

Adam Kirsch

A Spielbergian Fable with an Opaque Moral.

The Tikkun in Sutzkever’s Work

Elie Wiesel, translated and introduced by Allan Nadler

Elie Wiesel explores the soul and purpose of Holocaust poetry.

The World is Round

Abraham Socher

The heckler’s guide to beating an antisemite.