Book Essay // Refracted Identities, Mirrored Lives
Suleiman’s new book, The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in 20th-Century France, explores Némirovsky’s tragic career and the deteriorating civil society of pre-World War II France that first nurtured the writer and then ultimately turned on her. Drawing on parallels to her own life, Suleiman makes of the story a meditation on allegiance, foreignness and assimilation—one with uncanny echoes for today’s politics.
An American Jew in Israel
By Uri Regev
Jessica Fishman's skillfully written memoir Chutzpah and High Heels: The Search for Love and Identity in the Holy Land presents to the reader...
Book Review // Light Come Shining: The Transformations Of Bob Dylan
When Bob Dylan became the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature last October, the internet erupted with reactions ranging from euphoria to dismay.
Book Review // Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidali
Until the 1980s, women were a small minority among Hebrew writers. There was Russian-born Rahel Bluwstein (1890–1931), considered the “founding mother” of modern Hebrew poetry by women. Esther Raab (1894–1981) was the first native-born Israeli woman poet, principally known for her rich use of modern Hebrew.
Book Review // A Horse Walks Into a Bar
The earliest comedy I remember with any clarity was created by a famous tragic clown, a circus performer whose painted mouth was perpetually turned down in a frown. Left out of the spotlight, he carried a sledgehammer and ran after the other clowns who wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
Book Review // The Angel by Uri Bar-Joseph
Nine years have passed since the mysterious death of Ashraf Marwan, the senior Egyptian government official who volunteered to spy for Israel’s Mossad. Marwan remains at the center of a bitter controversy over why the October 1973 attack that launched the Yom Kippur War took Israel by surprise.
Book Review // The Extra by A.B. Yehoshua
There is a tradition, more prominent in theater than in fiction, of the unwanted guest. One thinks of such works as Kaufman and Hart’s 1939 play The Man Who Came to Dinner; the 1967 Stanley Kramer-directed Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner...
Book Review // Rhapsody in Schmaltz
Rhapsody in Schmaltz is not a book to devour in one sitting, nor should it be casually nibbled. Something of an oxymoron, this witty, entertaining volume overflows with food for thought and thoughts about food. It is stuffed with Talmudic arguments, biblical injunctions, slyly sexual linguistic tropes, and
Book Review // The Yid
Paul Goldberg’s debut novel, The Yid, may remind many of its readers of the movies of director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, and especially his 2009 World War II film Inglourious Basterds [sic], in which a French-Jewish cinema proprietor and a Jewish-American military squad work together to assassinate Hitler and others.
Book Review // Trouble in the Tribe
If you ever want to convince someone not to be Jewish, invite them to an argument over Israel. The rancor, the ignorance, the accusations of racism and anti-Semitism—there’s a reason the topic is often banned from polite conversation: The conversation is rarely polite.
Book Review // Sailor and Fiddler
I recently asked undergraduates in my Jewish literature class at George Washington University whether the name Herman Wouk meant anything to any of them. Not a single hand went up; not a single nod of recognition. Caine Mutiny? No response.
Book Review // Disraeli: The Novel Politician
David Cesarani’s succinct new biography of preeminent Victorian statesman and novelist Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Disraeli: The Novel Politician, challenges the commonly held view of Disraeli as having played a heroic role in Jewish history.