Khirbet Khizehby S. Yizhar cover

Book Review // Khirbet Khizeh

On 1979, an Israeli censorship committee chaired by the justice minister deleted five evocative paragraphs from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s memoir: his first-person account of the expulsion of Arab residents from the towns of Lydda and Ramle during Israel’s War of Independence in 1947-49. The description contradicted the heroic official line, which pictured Arabs as fleeing the fighting, not being deliberately forced out by Israeli forces.

Kosher Cheese on a cracker

Talk of the Table | Kosher Cheese Comes of Age

When Brent Delman was growing up in Cleveland, his culturally Jewish family, like their Eastern European forebears, ate lots of soft, fresh cheese—cream cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese—without worrying much about whether it was kosher. After all, cheese is just curdled milk, and as long as it’s not eaten with meat, what could be treif about it?

Anita Diamant and Dara Horn Talk

Anita Diamant & Dara Horn: In Conversation

We live in the era of Jewish historical fiction. Hundreds of novels set at some point in the long Jewish past have been published in recent years, some based on biblical stories or Jewish folk tales, others built around major historical figures. The phenomenon shows no sign of slowing, with readers continuing to greedily devour historical fiction, and writers delighted to feed their addiction.

Knesset

Opinion // Fania Oz-Salzberger

Regardless of the outcome of Israel’s general elections on March 17, the campaign for the 20th Knesset will be remembered for its verbal brutality, rhetoric shallowness and viral viciousness. Never has an Israeli election been so devoid of serious debate on the core issues. Whether Netanyahu or Herzog and Livni win at the polls, the main loser is already known: rational debate and communal ethos.