40th Anniversary Symposium: Wisdom for the Next Generation

with Robert Aumann, Theodore Bikel, Leon Fleisher, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jerome Groopman, Ruth Gruber, Fanya Heller, Madeleine Kunin, Walter Laqueur, Carl Levin, Faye Moskowitz, Judea Pearl, Richard Perle, Walter Reich, Howard Sachar, Jonathan Sacks, Hedy Schleifer, Adin Steinsaltz, Judith Viorst, Henry Waxman, Elie Wiesel, Leon Wieseltier, Ruth Wisse and A.B. Yehoshua Jonathan Sacks Wisdom is free, yet it is also the most expensive thing there is, for we tend to acquire it through failure or disappointment or grief. That is why we try to share our wisdom, so that others will not have to pay the price for it that we paid. Judaism has taught me far more about life than the space allows for here, but I do want to share with you three key lessons I have learned. First, use your time well. Life is short, too short to waste on television, computer...

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Sonogram

Short Fiction // Lead Apron

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…

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Khirbet Khizehby S. Yizhar cover

Book Review // Khirbet Khizeh

On 1979, an Israeli censorship committee chaired by the justice minister deleted five evocative paragraphs from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s memoir: his first-person account of the expulsion of Arab residents from the towns of Lydda and Ramle during Israel’s War of Independence in 1947-49. The description contradicted the heroic official line, which pictured Arabs as fleeing the fighting, not being deliberately forced out by Israeli forces.

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The Life of Saul Bellow to Fame and Fortune

Book Review // The Life of Saul Bellow

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.

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Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano cover

Book Review // Suspended Sentences

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.

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