James Kugel: Professor of Disbelief

When I was a teenager, there was a legend repeated in the Jewish schools of my hometown. If you somehow manage to get into godless Harvard, don’t go. But if, against your rosh yeshiva and rebbe’s advice, you actually go, whatever you do, don’t take biblical scholar James Kugel’s class. If you do, you’ll walk into Introduction to the Bible, see that the professor is wearing a yarmulke and assume the course is kosher. And, the story goes, you’ll walk out a heretic.

Continue reading

Fiction // The Nothing of History

Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Fiction // July was Reva’s month to fall apart. She slept through the alarm and ignored her husband’s attempts to rouse her. She showered sporadically. She added bourbon to her morning coffee. She stopped answering email, her cell phone, the door. She arrived late to the summer school class she was teaching and dismissed the students early.

Continue reading