Ask the Rabbis | Is Political Compromise a Jewish Virtue?
That’s how Abraham resolves his dispute with Lot over grazing lands: “If you head left, I’ll head right. If you head right, I’ll go left” (Genesis 13:9).
Visual Moment | Man Ray in Paris
Walking through the exhibition of artist Man Ray’s photographs at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is like stepping into a time machine.
Talk of the Table | The Satisfying Sweetness of Dates
When I need a sweet, satisfying nibble, I often pick up a date.
Fiction | Polonaise
The music of Chopin brings together a mysterious young Hungarian Holocaust survivor and an American music student. But just when romance is in the air, he vanishes.
Talk of the Table | A Tale of Two Briskets
If you grew up in an Ashkenazi Jewish home, you might remember the delicious oven-baked brisket your mom served up for holidays.
Ask the Rabbis | How Do You Deal With People in Your Community Who Don’t Want to Get Vaccinated?
I don’t. It is not my place to nudge people to get or not to get vaccinated.
Visual Moment | Judy Chicago’s Revolutionary Art
Judy Chicago always wanted to be an artist. “From the time I was a child,” she writes in her 2021 autobiography, The Flowering, “I had a burning desire to make art.”
Fiction | Private
Today, another of my usual jogs—the thousandth step of a thousandth run, every run varied enough to include something new.
Talk of the Table | The Bundt Is Born
In 1950, Rose Joshua and Fannie Schanfeld met with H. David Dalquist, owner of the Scandinavian cookware manufacturing company Nordic Ware, to discuss a proposal.
An Inconvenient Genocide
In the 1930s, America failed to stand up to Nazi actions against the Jews. Will history repeat itself with the Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang region?
Visual Moment | The Compelling Odysseys of Looted Art
In the sumptuous catalogue for the New York Jewish Museum’s late summer exhibition, Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art, on view through January 9, 2022, a cropped image of French artist Pierre Bonnard’s color-diffused painting Still Life with Guelder Roses appears alongside an army photograph of the salt mine in Altaussee, Austria, where the Nazis secreted looted art and other treasures.
Ask the Rabbis | How Can We Avoid the Trap of Self-Righteousness?
Everyone wants to be right—in the right way. What’s the line between striving for moral perfection and being a jerk?