On Being a Jewish American Writer in 2018
On November 12, Erika Dreifus presented the Creative Keynote Address at the 24th Annual Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium in Miami.
Carl Lutz: Gently Shaking the World
While Jews honor heroes like Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, the name of Carl Lutz is virtually unknown.
Book Review | Beirut Rules
Reading Beirut Rules takes us back to the unhappy 1980s when American diplomats, spies, and the military would be assigned to the Middle East—a complex and dangerous region that very few of them understood—and became sitting ducks for increasingly sophisticated terrorists who were financed and directed by Iran.
Author Interview | Alfred Moses
When Alfred Moses, an attorney and prominent national Jewish leader, traveled behind the Iron Curtain to Romania in 1976, the impoverished country was under the thumb of the ruthless and corrupt dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The trip changed Moses’s life, inspiring him to fight for the freedom of Romania’s Jews.
Book Review | President Carter
After Jimmy Carter became president, he moved beyond long and firm support for Israel rooted in his belief in biblical Christianity to sympathy and support for the Palestinians and other Arabs, according to his top adviser in those years.
Book Review | On the Surface of Silence: The Last Poems of Lea Goldberg Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back
On the Surface of Silence, the final collection of legendary Israeli poet Lea Goldberg, is a book of splendor in more ways than one. With its large 10×10 format, a beautiful cover photo of a desert landscape, a selection of mystical pen-and-ink drawings by the poet, and the haunting poems themselves in Hebrew and English on facing pages, as if afloat in a world of silence
Book Review | Concrete Boxes: Mizrahi Women on Israel’s Periphery by Pnina Motzafi-Haller
We are waking up to the fact that Mizrachim now make up more than half of all Israeli Jews. And not only do Mizrachim come from a different part of the world, but they also continue to view Zionism, Judaism, religion and gender very differently than do Jews of European descent.
Book Review | Against the Inquisition by Marcos Aguinis
Little known in English, Aguinis has been a Latin American literary powerhouse for 50 years, turning out elegant, prize-winning bestsellers that have explored everything from Argentine history to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the life of Maimonides, all to the praise of his largely non-Jewish audience.
The Top 5 Books
We asked experts and aficionados to recommend their top five books on timely and intriguing subjects—from trends in American Judaism to Jewish romance.
Welcome to Our Summer Books Issue
When I was in second grade my mother told me to read upside down. “You’re reading too fast,” she said, “it’s upsetting the teacher.” She had been instructed to do this as a child, and it was only natural for her to pass this wisdom on to me. Even now, I occasionally flip the book over in order to savor the story.
Philip Roth: A Writer and His People
Over the course of his remarkable career, Philip Roth received nearly every literary award imaginable. One of these prizes was an honorary doctorate from the...
Staff Picks: Madame Secretary, Modern Midrash and Melanie Phillips
What we’re reading—and watching—this week.