Books


Our Favorite Heretic

By Allan Nadler

The array of uses and misuses of Baruch Spinoza, perhaps Judaism’s most-famed heretic, is testimony to the boundlessness of the human imagination.Read More

A Curmudgeon’s Guide To Jewish History

By Eddy Portnoy

As Harvey Pekar reached the end of his life, the Jewish issue evidently came to interest him a great deal not only in a personal way, but also in a broader historical sense.Read More

No Straight Path From Dogma to Dissent

By Benjamin Ivry

Vasily Grossman took a complex path from syncophancy to dissidence under Soviet anti-Semitic oppression. A new biography takes an unsparing look at his career.Read More

The Liberation of Helène Aylon

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Helene Aylon grew up Orthodox in Brooklyn’s Boro Park, became a rebbetzin and then a feminist artist. A new memoir traces her remarkable journey.Read More

Stopping To Think About the Roses

By Ilan Stavans

There was a time when Latin American writers felt compelled — maybe the word is “constrained” — to focus their work on Latin America. Andrés Neuman takes a more global approach.Read More

Thoughts That Move in Space

By Jake Marmer

‘N18’ is a collection of Hank Lazer’s so-called ‘shape-poems,’ works in which the handwritten layout is at least as important as the actual words that comprise the verses.Read More

Life in British Mandate Palestine

By Jerome A. Chanes

‘Out of Palestine’ is a truly fascinating discussion of a period that is still incompletely and insufficiently understood: the last years of the British Mandate in Palestine.Read More

Hasidic Tales and Prayer-Poems

By Rachel Barenblat

The sheer number of names, rebbes, dynasties and towns may overwhelm readers of ‘A Hidden Light.’ To author Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, each one is an intimate friend.Read More

Unlikely Chronicler of Jewish Neighborhood

By Gary Shapiro

Clayton Patterson is an unlikely candidate to launch a history of the Jewish Lower East Side. He’s not Jewish, has a biker’s beard and runs the New York Tattoo Society.Read More

Broadway Empire

By Eileen Reynolds

The Tonys are coming up on Sunday, making it the perfect time for a yarn about the Shubert family. Eileen Reynolds writes about her family’s link to Broadway royalty.Read More




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