From the Editor | The Miracle That Is Jewish Jokes
Believe it or not, I grew up in a Jewish family that didn’t tell jokes.
Essay | Searching for Solomon Cohen
Own a piece of history! This was what the listing for the “Solomon Cohen House,” built in 1875, urged prospective buyers to do.
Book Review | Greed, Drugs and Philanthropy
In this time of corrective unnamings—to remove traces of admiration or gratitude for the morally reevaluated—the names of unrepentant slaveholders, Confederate generals, contemporary sexual predators and other assorted wrongdoers have been erased or proposed for erasure from college dorms, military bases, city streets and more.
Book Review | Waiting for the Messiah in Williamsburg
How did the Satmar Hasidim come to dominate the Brooklyn neighborhood known as Williamsburg?
Book Review | Building Community One Tile at a Time
At the Museum at Eldridge Street’s Egg Rolls, Egg Creams and Empanadas street festival—a celebration of Ashkenazi Jewish, Chinese and Puerto Rican communities held each summer (pre-pandemic) on New York’s Lower East Side—groups of Chinese Americans and American Jewish women play mahjong side by side, sometimes pausing to teach younger festivalgoers how to play.
Book Review | A Writer Irreverent Even in Death
Even those familiar with the prolific English novelist and essayist Jenny Diski (1947-2016) don’t think of her as primarily a “Jewish” writer.
Opinion | Would Jesus Get the Vaccine?
In March, Franklin Graham, the culture warrior evangelist and vociferous defender of former President Donald Trump, urged Christians to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Moment Debate | Is There a Moral Argument For Raising Taxes on the Rich?
Not as an abstract principle, true any time, but I approve of the tax and spending program proposed by President Biden, and I’m prepared to defend it on moral grounds.
Moment Debate Round Two | Should the First Amendment Apply to Social Media?
Paul Barrett’s practical concerns about applying the First Amendment online are well-taken, but constitutional law demands this result in certain cases.
Opinion | Can Hope Survive the Latest Israel-Gaza ‘Round’?
Modern Hebrew, especially military and political jargon, tends to reflect the state of the nation.
Opinion | The Fights That Bind
A glutton for punishment, I recently slogged my way through all 316 online comments attached to a New York Times piece in which two Howard University officials, Brandon Hogan and Jacoby Adeshei Carter, defended themselves against the accusation by Cornel West and Jeremy Tate in The Washington Post that their decision to eliminate Howard University’s classics department to save money was a “spiritual catastrophe.”
Opinion | Did Biden Pass His First Israel Test?
Back to normal can be a blessing—as it is for a vaccinated public after COVID-19.