David Mikics
By David Mikics
-
Culture Why the World Still Needs Saul Bellow
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune By Zachary Leader Knopf, 832 pages, $40 ‘Was I a man or was I a jerk?” Saul Bellow asked on his deathbed. By “man,” of course, he meant mensch. Zachary Leader, Bellow’s new biographer, answers Bellow’s dying question: “Both.” Bellow was a jerk: Famously prickly and…
-
Culture Perplexed By Maimonides? Here’s Guide for You.
Maimonides: Life and Thought By Moshe Halbertal Princeton University Press, 400 pages, $35 About 800 years before the Pew study, Moses Maimonides received a worried letter from the leader of the Jewish community of Yemen asking him how to combat the specter of assimilation. Yemenite Jews had recently been afflicted by persecution and by a…
-
Culture Is There Anything Jewish About Giving to Charity?
● Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition by Gary A. Anderson Yale University Press, 232 pages, $30 Charity, as an old joke puts it, sometimes does begin at home, but it always begins with an annoying phone call. But Jews, with their high rates of charitable giving, have often been eager…
-
Culture Franz Kafka’s Birthday Offers Kafkaesque Dilemma
● Kafka: The Years of Insight By Reiner Stach Translated from the German by Shelley Frisch Princeton University Press, $35, 720 pages In September 1913, Franz Kafka, employee of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute of Prague and recently the author of two flawless, utterly disturbing stories — “The Judgment” and “The Metamorphosis” — took a…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
- 2
Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
- 3
News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
- 4
Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Piers Morgan is what’s wrong with media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and I can’t stop watching him
-
Culture The Jewish secret to affordable eyewear that isn’t so secret anymore
-
Opinion The profound internal contradiction that could spell doom for Hillel
-
Looking Forward When the 92nd Street Y was a hub for Black innovation in dance