Interview | Ehud Barak: An Israel Without Hate
As Israeli elections near, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak speaks out about the meaning of Zionism, a one-state vs. two-state solution and the kind of leadership Israel needs
Opinion | Why We Need Taboos
It took the Holocaust to make casual anti-Jewish talk so toxic that polite society wouldn’t stand for it. Eroding that sense of toxicity is much easier; internet memes can do it. But it’s also possible to invite backlash against strong, important taboos by clinging to weaker ones that are broader than necessary. We ignore the distinction at our peril.
Opinion | Jews of Color Are Us
Until white members of our tribe repudiate default correlations between religion and race, and until we treat our black and brown brothers and sisters with equal dignity, we can never fulfill the promise of becoming a diverse, welcoming community in which every individual is seen as tzelem elohim, a mirror image of God
Opinion | Ilhan Omar’s Blast from the Past
Ilhan Omar’s tweets caused a controversy. But anti-Semitism in Congress is nothing new.
LISTEN: Robert Siegel Interviews Zachary Leader
Robert Siegel spoke with Zachary Leader, author of the new biography The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005, at a bookstore in Washington, DC. Bellow “has fantastic mimetic powers, imaginative powers,” Leader says, “and he created a range of reference in his language that was new and more fairly American than the style of his predecessors.” Read the full interview from our latest issue here.
What Will Be the Fate of the House of Fates?
The House of Fates is ground zero in a struggle over history and memory, raising questions that are pertinent today not only in Hungary but also across post-communist Europe. The struggle is about the politicization of the Holocaust by an increasingly autocratic government and about who gets to tell its story, and how.
Manna Is Real and Not So Heavenly
The description of manna in the Bible matches what Danin found in the Sinai Desert. He soon discovered that the white drops on the shrub’s stems were the digestive byproduct of insects that feed on the plant’s sap, known as honeydew. The secretion, formed at night, is loaded with sugar. The sweet liquid hardens to the form of white granules and is still collected from spring to early fall in many places in the Middle East today.
Book Review | The Life of a Library
In Prince of the Press, Joshua Teplitsky brings us inside David Oppenheim’s library to explore the ways this collection both reflected and shaped the intellectual heritage of Central European Jewry.
Book Review | Hollywood’s Proud Zionist
The great French film director Jean-Luc Godard called Ben Hecht a “genius” who “invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood today.” Yet most modern American Jews have likely never heard of Hecht, despite his eminence as a playwright, best-selling novelist and screenwriter of a host of Hollywood film classics.
Book Review | The American Jewish Identity Crisis Rages On
American Jews may not know their way around the Talmud or much about Jewish history, but they sure do excel at soul-searching and have for many, many years. In the late 19th century, in the mid-20th and again in our own day, taking the community’s pulse—and finding it weak and listless—has been a common pursuit and a constant refrain.
The Vilification of George Soros In Israel
Billionaire George Soros has been accused of being anti-Israel and a Nazi collaborator. In the United States, Hungary, Israel, and some parts of American-Jewish community. This story tells how he became vilified.