The first time I found myself in synagogue for the chanting of the Book of Kohelet, or Ecclesiastes—typically read by Ashkenazi Jews during the Shabbat of Sukkot, the fall harvest festival—my first astonished thought was that I’d wandered into the wrong room, or at least picked up the wrong book.
The rise of Volodymyr Zelensky from comic improv-artist-turned-movie-star, to wealthy producer, to wartime leader of a besieged Ukraine is improbable enough to invite hyperbole.
Barbra Streisand remains the single most powerful and enduring female Jewish cultural figure of my lifetime, writes Glenn Frankel.
What becomes of the national leader deemed guilty, but whose popularity is such that punishing him would risk political upheaval or a “lost cause” movement ? Two books, focused on a historic trial, seek to answer the question.
Through all the multiple David Mamets, one personality remains constant: a bold, aggressive, exceedingly confident, superbly well-read, arguably narcissistic provocateur.
Jewish Baby Boomers like me grew up hearing about Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr. because they were two intellectually precocious, rich Chicago teenagers who were also Jewish.
In 1974, Martin Peretz and his wife Anne bought The New Republic with her money.
A tradition at my friend’s Passover seder is for guests to go around the table and say what they would carry with them when leaving Egypt.
For more than four decades after he was suddenly and unceremoniously removed from participation in the 100-meter relay race at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Marty Glickman—then a young athlete, later a beloved voice of New York sports radio—vaguely and quietly chalked up the greatest disappointment of his life to “politics.”
When anxieties are rippling through the culture, novelists can’t help picking up the signal.
After Italian philosopher Umberto Eco published his first novel, The Name of the Rose (1980), to worldwide critical acclaim and instant bestsellerdom, scores of major humanities scholars started thinking about fiction as a possible genre for them too.
Forsaking one’s native country for another place can create an odd mix of new and old identities.
