Talk of the Table | Why Feminists Should Eat Dairy on Hanukkah
Hanukkah is associated with the bravery of the Maccabees, the group of heroic Jews who rebelled against the Greek-Syrian empire, defeated it against all odds...
‘A Memory of an Illusion’: A Talk With Russian Activist Masha Gessen
Did you know that Israel is not the only Jewish state in the world? Deep in the territory of the Russian Federation, close to the Chinese border is the other Jewish state: Birobidzhan.
Putin’s Jews
Mina Yuditskaya Berliner, a retired teacher of German, could be forgiven for feeling surprised when one of her former students invited her for tea after almost half a century. Berliner, now 94, hadn’t seen him since she made aliyah to Israel from the USSR in 1973. But in 2005, the former student came to Israel to visit—an official visit, no less, the first ever made by a Soviet or Russian leader.
Opinion // Our Loss Is Putin’s Gain
Carl von Clausewitz, the imposing German general whose theories about war remain influential nearly 200 years after his death, observed that “public opinion is won through great victories and the occupation of the enemy’s capital.” Not anymore.
Book Review // Little Failure: A memoir by Gary Shteyngart
The title, Little Failure, is of course ironic. By now, after Gary Shteyngart’s three best-selling comic novels, many travel articles and dozens of interviews—in which he rarely gives a straight answer—his Russian Jewish immigrant parents must have forgiven him for not becoming the lawyer or accountant they envisioned. Or have they?
Book Review: A Child of Christian Blood, The Devil That Never Dies
Richard Bernstein reviews two new works on anti-Semitism by Edmund Levin and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.
Q&A: Middle East Scholar Aaron David Miller on Syria and Israel
The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain reached a UN Security Council resolution this week to compel Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons stock...
Travels with Pnin
In college, I made the ill-advised decision to join the cross-country ski team. Slow, given to daydreams, and so lacking any sense of direction that...
A Circus Wedding
Two circus monkeys recently got married, watched by two of their proud monkey parents. Such a scene would usually be reserved for a greeting card,...
The Jewish Part in the Caucasus Conflict
Last week, as the state of war was officially declared between Russia and Georgia over the region of South Ossetia, Israel suddenly popped into the...