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




Find us on Facebook!
  • The countdown to Purim starts now! Share these with your friends and family (more to come this week).
  • Have you ever hidden your Jewish identity? At 18 Paul Berger lived with a host family in Russia. 19 years later, he told them he was Jewish: http://jd.fo/s2uEl
  • The dark side of Purim, or "that time we killed Haman, his sons and 75,000 of the Jews’ enemies."
  • IN PHOTOS: This is what 50,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews protesting the Haredi draft looks like. http://jd.fo/q2u2d
  • "Son of God," "Noah" and now "Girls" — 2014 is the year of the Bible movie. Did you miss Lena Dunham's SNL parody? Check it out here:
  • How Doris Day and Miss Clairol helped Jews join the mainstream: http://jd.fo/a2gln
  • Not everyone leaves the ultra-Orthodox world because they want to rebel. Some feel they have no other choice. http://jd.fo/s2tbP
  • "The scene was completely surreal."
  • How Jewish and/or Euro-Asian do you have to be to lead the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress? Not very, apparently.
  • What's it like to be a Jewish writer in the Midwest? Brooke Berman and Joshua Furst are here to tell you. http://jd.fo/t2tis
  • Letty Cottin Pogrebin dishes about the 40th anniversary of "Free To Be You and Me," her feminist trajectory and her activism around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. http://jd.fo/p2tkR
  • Jewish military families often feel invisible to the community. Here's three things we can do to make them feel like they are supported. http://jd.fo/d2edA
  • There’s a million ways to make hamantaschen these days, from gummy bears and dulce de leche to roasted lamb and pine nuts. Go ahead and bake 'em all. http://jd.fo/c2fhc
  • Did you hear the one about the Orthodox shul steps from an erotic lingerie shop, a medical marijuana clinics and few tattoo parlors? Oh, and it's on the beach. http://jd.fo/e2fNR
  • Will this new bagel shop FINALLY end the bagel war between Montreal and New York City? http://jd.fo/a2fSx
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