Winter 2024

Letters, Winter 2024

Reconstructing the Bible I’d like to take issue with Ethan Schwartz’s recent essay “You Say You Want a Revelation” reviewing Edward Feld’s The Book of Revolutions. Feld did not wing…

A Kibbutz and Its Fullness

Neta Stahl

"How could I remember my place and my people without contaminating the memories with the catastrophe that had just befallen us?"

Before & After October 7: A Symposium

David Biale , Mijal Bitton, Mikhal Dekel, Hillel Halkin, Anthony Julius, Shimrit Meir, Yiftach Ofek, Itamar Rabinovich, Dennis Ross, Arieh Saposnik, Leah Sarna, Daniel B. Schwartz, Anita Shapira, Michael Walzer, Ruth R. Wisse, David J. Wolpe

We asked distinguished friends and contributors a simple question: what did you believe before October 7 that you no longer believe?

Pogrom: A Poem

Amichai Chasson

Will the hunters come again to our abode tonight, seeking our souls with gun threats? Will they come quiet and furtive, until the crack of a shot cuts through the…

Tamar, Helen, and Love’s Ambition

Noah Millman

What can Shakespeare’s most unlikely love story tell us about Tamar’s "bed trick" and the fate of the Jewish people?

Readjusting Sights

Matti Friedman

Reams of military history, and recollections by generals have been written on Israel’s many wars, but in this bookish country, Haim Sabato is one of the few Israeli soldiers to write a truly literary memoir.

Leapsniffing through the Vimveil: Avram Davidson’s Fantastic Fiction

Yosef Lindell

Gods in fishbowls, men who are apes, and a Jewish dentist abducted by aliens: the fantastic fiction of Avram Davidson was almost as strange as his life.

Origin Stories

Malka Z. Simkovich

If the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible weren't Jewish, when did Judaism begin?

Lovers (and Haters) of Zion

Ilan Troen

A new history of Zionism tells the tale through the towering emotions of its proponents and adversaries.

Israel’s Iron Lady

Benjamin Balint

Golda told Nixon: “You are the president of 150 million Americans; I am the prime minister of six million prime ministers.”

Stuck in the Middle

Allan Arkush

Would American Jews be safer if they removed themselves from politics?

Anti-Israelism

Jonathan Karp

It's a new prejudice, not just the old story in a new guise.

Of  “Good Jews” and Bad Binaries

Reviel Netz

Anti-Israeli bigots do not hate Israel because they believe the worst about its actions. They feel an urge to believe the worst about Israeli actions because they hate Israel.

An Old-New Bigotry? A Response

Abraham Socher

Both Jonathan Karp’s and Reviel Netz’s essays are written in the shadow of October 8—not the day of the unthinkably brutal Hamas massacre in southern Israel, but the day after.

Reprise of the Repressed

Adam Kirsch

So much of American Jewish pop-culture sets out to shame the audience, one wonders why there's such an appetite for it.

“The Secret of Our Army’s Endurance”

S.Y. Agnon, Jeffrey Saks

"I think the army is nothing to play around with, but dabbling in pacifism is a bad business."

Black Hats, Green Fatigues

Cole S. Aronson

They don't like the Z-word, but new haredi IDF soldiers sound a lot like the old Zionists.

Facing Faces

Shai Secunda

Nearly every morning since October 7, I open my phone and look at the faces of the war’s most recent victims. I gaze at these portraits fearfully, searching for a…

Oh Homeland, Don’t You Wonder (Tzion Ha-lo Tishali)

Yehuda Halevi, translated by Dan Alter

Dan Alter translates Judah Halevi's poem of yearning for Zion from nearly a thousand years ago.