What ‘Genius’ Gets Right—and Wrong—About the Jewish Einstein

In the popular imagination, Albert Einstein is a benign, whimsical and endearing old man. Yet of course, the real Einstein was more complex—though he was brilliant and had his fanciful quirks, in many ways he was also self-absorbed and careless, obsessive and absent-minded to the point of callousness.

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Interview | Yuval Harari

Born in Haifa to Eastern European immigrants, Harari now lives with his husband in a moshav outside Jerusalem. A vegan deeply distressed by the suffering of domesticated animals, Harari meditates daily (plus a 60-day silent retreat each year). He does this, he says, to understand more fully the nature of human consciousness and “human dissatisfaction.” Moment talks with Harari about the role of technology in politics and the rise of big data, as well as topics Harari does not usually discuss, such as Judaism and Israel.

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Book Review | The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age by Steven Weitzman

As the subtitle of the book says, we live in a rootless age. People everywhere, not just Jews, seek their roots, their ancestry, their genetic makeup. We yearn to discover who we are; alas, our tools are not always up to the task. But there is pleasure in the pursuit, and we should be grateful to Weitzman for being a reliable guide.

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Book Review | The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

Bulgaria. How little thought I had ever given to Bulgaria, but here it is in the vivid, fast-paced, fascinating new novel The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova. Author of the best-selling novel The Historian, Kostova is a writer who knows how to keep you in suspense, to frighten and amaze you, all while building characters whose fate will matter to you more and more as she reveals a whole country, its history, its tragedy, its politics, its scenery and its sad beauty.

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