With publication of the second and final volume of his monumental biography of Saul Bellow, Zachary Leader, a professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton in London, has completed a decade-long immersion in Bellow’s life and letters.
Although she was a trailblazer, second-wave feminists in the 1960s disliked her, and she returned their ire, describing them as “crazy women who burn their bras and…hate men.” Meir resented attempts to turn her into a feminist icon.
Much like the swashbuckling heroes of his popular novels, author Mark Helprin has led a life of great adventure. As a young man, Helprin served in the Israeli army, the Israeli air force and the British merchant navy, and he’s earned his living as an agricultural laborer, a factory worker, a military adviser, a Wall Street Journal columnist, a political speechwriter and much more.
Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan was enjoying a peaceful afternoon at home on December 30, 2015, when a phone call from an old friend, Haaretz journalist Or Kashti, changed her life. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “It may be the biggest story I will ever break.” “Good for you!” replied Rabinyan. “No,” said Kashti quietly, “it is very good for you.”
Dani Dayan has an unusual background for an Israeli diplomat. The Argentinian-born secular Israeli and successful tech entrepreneur was Israel’s chief advocate for the settlers from 2007 to 2013 as chairman of the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Born in Soviet Ukraine, Steven Volynets immigrated to the United States as a child. He turned to literature after several years as a journalist. Moment spoke with him about his new story, his childhood in Russia and his evolution as a writer.
“Whenever I want to hear my father’s voice, I can pick up a book from my bedside and I can hear him speak.”
Sixteen years later, the original “cast members” look back at the famous trial that debunked Holocaust revisionism—and changed their lives.
There are few more outspoken proponents of conservative ideas in North American Jewry today than Ruth Wisse: pioneer of the academic study of modern Jewish literature, longtime professor of Yiddish and Yiddish literature at McGill and Harvard, essayist, political commentator and author of a dozen books. In works such as If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, Wisse argues that Jews must stop blaming themselves for the hatred, past and present, of Judaism and Jews.
What makes great literature? Do Jeffrey Eugenides and Stephen King write beach reads or books worthy of the canon—or both? And where do women writers fit in? One of the biggest advocates for breaking down barriers between popular and critically revered books is a writer whose trademark is creating quirky Jewish women who worry about their weight and eventually find true love—and themselves in the process.
As Hurricane Irene descended on New York City in 2011, acclaimed poet Edward Hirsch received a text message from his only son Gabriel that he would be home in an hour. That was the last time he would hear from him.
Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the second woman to join the Supreme Court, after Sandra Day O’Connor, and the first Jewish woman.
