Ask the Rabbis // Special Passover Edition
Is it permitted to invite a non-Jew to your Seder? And is it a good idea?
Editing the Editor
The Education of an Interloper
by Jack Miles
It was as a student at the Hebrew University during the 1966-1967 academic year that I was first introduced to...
Curating a New Jewish Canon
When Jack Miles approached me with the proposition to edit the Judaism volume of the projected Norton Anthology of World Religions, I was naturally flattered but also confounded. There are, of course, many anthologies of Judaism in different formats. But the Norton anthologies are different.
Book Review // The UnAmericans
“Listen,” says Tomás to his daughter, Daniela. “I know what you wrote.” Tomás is an academic, a Czech, who got out of Prague before the fall of communism, along with his wife, Katka, and baby Daniela. Now, he’s teaching at a two-bit college in Maine, divorced from Katka when their little girl was only two, and nearly estranged from his grown daughter, now a playwright. As “The Quietest Man” begins, Daniela has sold her very first play—and her father, the tale’s narrator, is determined to use her good fortune to reconnect with her…
Anita Diamant & Dara Horn: In Conversation
We live in the era of Jewish historical fiction. Hundreds of novels set at some point in the long Jewish past have been published in recent years, some based on biblical stories or Jewish folk tales, others built around major historical figures. The phenomenon shows no sign of slowing, with readers continuing to greedily devour historical fiction, and writers delighted to feed their addiction.
The New Sultan of Turkey
Former Prime Minister—now President—Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Party are more powerful than ever. Is the nation’s democracy under siege?
By Yigal Schleifer
Adiminutive 63-year-old with dyed...
Invite non-Jews to your Seder!
Editor and publisher Nadine Epstein asks you to invite a non-Jew to your seder this year in order to help combat anti-Semitism.
Color Red, Color Red
by David W. Weiss
July 14, 2014
We have just been seated on the motorized cart that takes handicapped passengers to the departure gates when the sirens...
Why We Write Jewish Historical Fiction
by Nomi Eve and Stephanie Feldman
What makes Jewish historical fiction special—as an art form, and as a conversation among Jewish writers and readers? Novelists Nomi...
Ask the Rabbis // Conversion
How do you decide when a candidate for conversion is ready to become Jewish?
The Other Side of the Wall
Praying at the western wall first as a man, then as a woman.