Book Review | Very, Very Dirty Money
The stories that David de Jong first reported for Bloomberg News and now recounts in his book Nazi Billionaires document the sordid embrace of the Nazi regime by Germany’s wealthiest industrial dynasties and those dynasties’ continued prosperity today.
Book Review | The Maus That Roared
The latest cycle of public panic over book-banning—as distinct from the constant, threatening drumbeat of book-banning itself—kicked off last January when The New York Times reported that a school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, had withdrawn Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel/memoir Maus: A Survivor’s Tale from the eighth-grade Holocaust education curriculum.
Book Review | A Jewish Kid Who Loved Yeats
Robert Pinsky’s father, an Orthodox Jewish optician in Long Branch, New Jersey, liked to sum up success stories with a favorite phrase: “It all worked out okay.”
Book Review | A Family of Ambitious Aristocrats
The Morgenthaus, the late New York mayor Ed Koch once said, were “the closest thing we’ve got to royalty in New York City.”
Book Review | Secrets of a Musical Family
Mary Rodgers’s posthumous autobiography is a brash, outrageous and entertaining excursion into the life of its author.
Book Review | Studying Talmud with Beruriah
When the ancient rabbis had a question about the Torah—an important detail that seemed to be missing, an inconsistency between two passages, even a redundant word or verse—they would often solve the problem by writing a midrash, or story, filling in the missing piece or reconciling the seeming contradiction.
Book Review | Israel’s Star Turn
When the state of Israel turned 30 in 1978, its supporters in Hollywood threw a star-studded party. What changed?
Summer Novels to Feast On
Every summer, Jennifer Weiner serves up a quintessential summer novel, effortlessly blending the cozy and the topical and usually sprinkling in some Cape Cod flavor.
Book Review | A Madcap Holocaust Holiday
An elderly Holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven.
New Jewish Kidlit: Beyond the Holocaust and Holidays
In a recent article in School Library Journal, news editor Kara Yorio observes that for a long time, “[children’s] books about Jewish people or by Jewish authors fit into two categories: the Holocaust and holidays,” while Jewish secondary characters often seemed stereotyped.
Book Review | The Temple of Whitefish and Lox
Lori Zabar's new book reveals the family history behind the iconic grocery store.
Book Review | Germany’s Time of the Wolves
A European country bombed into rubble. Refugees streaming across multiple borders.