Opinion // Declaring the Rights of Migrants
Refugees are flocking to the European continent in ever-growing numbers, and Europeans show increasing resistance to accepting them.
Opinion // The True Value of Cheap Books
It is Book Week in Tel Aviv. At Rabin Square, the tables are loaded with volumes, old and new, light and heavy, and buyers are leafing through them as they move from one publisher’s table to the next.
From the Deputy Editor
When I started at Moment more than six years ago, I quickly gravitated toward the magazine’s books section. It wasn’t long before every review copy of a new book that arrived at the office landed on my desk.
Mount Zion: Jerusalem’s Wild & Sacred Backyard
Located just outside Jerusalem’s old city walls, Mount Zion is home to King David’s tomb, the room of the last supper and a former mosque. Today, a tangle of neglectful Israeli authorities has allowed the site to become a beacon for ultra-nationalist religious Jews.
Book Review // Rhapsody in Schmaltz
Rhapsody in Schmaltz is not a book to devour in one sitting, nor should it be casually nibbled. Something of an oxymoron, this witty, entertaining volume overflows with food for thought and thoughts about food. It is stuffed with Talmudic arguments, biblical injunctions, slyly sexual linguistic tropes, and
Book Review // The Yid
Paul Goldberg’s debut novel, The Yid, may remind many of its readers of the movies of director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, and especially his 2009 World War II film Inglourious Basterds [sic], in which a French-Jewish cinema proprietor and a Jewish-American military squad work together to assassinate Hitler and others.
Book Review // Trouble in the Tribe
If you ever want to convince someone not to be Jewish, invite them to an argument over Israel. The rancor, the ignorance, the accusations of racism and anti-Semitism—there’s a reason the topic is often banned from polite conversation: The conversation is rarely polite.
Talk of the Table // Just (Deli) Desserts
Like much of the Jewish culinary canon, modern Jewish pastries were influenced by the world around them. The familiar cookies we see now in Jewish-style delicatessens were, in many cases, riffs on the desserts of various immigrant groups comingling with Jews in America…
David Grossman: The Dissenting Patriot
In 1987, the editors of the Israeli weekly newsmagazine Koteret Rashit marked the 20th year of Israeli control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by dispatching the young, up-and-coming novelist and journalist David Grossman to spend seven weeks among Palestinians and Israeli settlers living in the West Bank.
Reframing Roman Vishniac’s Legacy
Maya Benton was a high school senior living in Los Angeles when the Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac’s first posthumous book, To Give Them Light, came out in 1993. Renowned for his iconic images of Eastern European Jews taken between the two World Wars, Vishniac had died three years earlier at age 92.
Is Free Speech Under Fire on Campus?
Over the past few months, a series of student protests has erupted across the United States on campuses such as Amherst, Dartmouth, Ithaca, the University of Missouri and Yale. While the specific spark of each protest has differed, their substance has been of like mind: Students are contending that their administrations have neglected an obligation to address bigotry, discrimination and intolerance, and specifically racism.
