For years, falafel was Israel’s iconic food, its global culinary ambassador. But in recent years, another Israeli dish with working-class roots has become a major player in the game of street-food diplomacy: the savory tomato and egg mixture called shakshuka.
Trees matter, and Israelis, of all people, should understand why.
When I was in Israel in late 2013, I drove across the rugged expanse of the Negev on Route 31. At the time, Israeli newspapers were full of articles describing highly controversial demolitions of Bedouin homes and villages, failed plans to resettle the Bedouin, and ongoing tensions between the Bedouin and the Israeli government.
I am 22 and pregnant, which means I’m not a teen statistic, but you can chalk me up to the idiot percentages who think they know what they’re doing with a condom. When I was a kid, I planned my future around a timeline like the one I’m in. Then again, when I was a kid I planned to explore the earth by sea. Now there are no explorers left: satellites can read your watch from space and planes can take you across the planet in a day…
JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH 2015 // Leonard Fein, who passed away in 2014, and Elie Wiesel—both writers deeply concerned about Judaism and Jews—founded Moment to be an independent voice in the Jewish American community.
HER FAMILY OWNED THE BUILDING. THE NAZIS TOOK IT AWAY. NOW SHE WANTED JUSTICE.
No topic in history has provoked a greater outpouring of books and treatises than Hitler’s Third Reich. As of 1995 there were 25,000 titles on the Nazi era, and by the year 2000, the total reached “a whopping 37,000,” according to author Alon Confino, who cites a scholarly list compiled in Darmstadt. This continuing flood attests to the ongoing struggle, within and without Germany, to comprehend the motivations behind the rise of National Socialism and its monstrous offspring, the Holocaust.
As he lay dying, Saul Bellow, “the most decorated writer in American history,” slipped back into consciousness, looked up, and asked, “Was I a man or was I a jerk?” Somewhere within that sentence lies Bellow’s greatness as a novelist—his fabulous sense of wonder and entitlement about himself, coupled with a magical gift for language and a rattling insecurity. This is what Zachary Leader writes about in his doggedly detailed and adoring biography of Bellow.
On October 9th, 2014, when the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the French writer Patrick Modiano, it seemed to his loving readers as if their long quest on his behalf had finally been fulfilled. Not that this shy and modest man ever considered fame or awards, but that he never even considered that writing novels was a career.
Why we should keep talking with Jewish campus activists who criticize Israel. By Sarah Posner
