Opinion // How Liberal Streams of Judaism Turned the Next Generation Against Its Birthright
Tikkun olam promises much and demands comparatively little in the way of sacrifice. This is its greatest strength and, perhaps, its major weakness.
Jewish Word // Blood libel
In September, Josh Marshall of the online political news outlet Talking Points Memo reached for an unexpected metaphor to express his disgust at Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric…
From The Editor // January-February, 2017
Washington has had unseasonably warm weather, with leaves clinging to branches and roses blooming into the first weeks of winter. But the winds of political change have also blown into the nation’s capital.
Interview: Steven Volynets
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.
The Great Hanukkah Clanging
Hanukkah was really only about one thing when I was growing up. It wasn’t the presents—they were generally small and unexciting…
Gelt-y Pleasures for All Ages
In the story of Hanukkah—the cruel reign of Antiochus, the unlikely victory of Mattathias and his sons, the one cruse of sacred oil left in the plundered Temple that burned for eight days—there is no mention of money.
Book Review // Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism and Delegitimizing Israel
At the end of the 19th century, European liberals and Zionists developed diametrically opposite strategies for dealing with the menace posed by anti-Semitism…
Book Review // Moonglow
Michael Chabon’s first published works, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and A Model World, were realist, lovely and a little dull with caution. Chabon himself describes his early work as “plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew,”
Fiction // Turboatom
I wanted to tell my father that the fish salad was shining, but he was asleep, calling my name in long somniloquous moans. I stood at his bedside, the shape of our room made visible by the scarce lights of the Marshal Zhukov Street. Slava! My name rose from his lungs…
Jewish Word // Blitspost (Email), tekstl (text), zikhele (selfie) & more
A lexicographic tour de force, the Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary, published this year by Indiana University Press, is an expedition through the layers of a language spoken by rebbes and poets, nurses and prostitutes, schoolchildren and soldiers…
Opening a Pandora’s Box of Hate
Moment editors Look Back at Presidential Campaign Season 2016. There were an uncomfortable number of Jewish moments, some of which constituted outright anti-Semitism…
Book Review // Judas
Amos Oz’s novel Habesorah Al Pi Yehudah (The Gospel According to Judas), translated by his longtime collaborator, Nicholas de Lange, under the title Judas, opens in the winter of 1959-60, when the life of Shmuel Ash, a graduate student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is turned upside down…