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…
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward USC cancels commencement speech from Muslim valedictorian after she shared link to anti-Israel website
- 2
Fast Forward 2 House members lead the charge to oust the speaker. Both have been accused of trafficking in antisemitism.
- 3
Opinion The head of the largest Christian Zionist organization is no friend to Israel — he wants an apocalypse there
- 4
Opinion USC: Don’t blame Jews for canceling your valedictorian
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Columbia protests: Israeli professor barred from campus and Congress members demand action to protect Jewish students
-
Fast Forward Inspired by Columbia example, pro-Palestinian encampments spring up at colleges nationwide
-
News With trust ‘broken,’ Columbia descends into chaos and protests spread
-
Fast Forward Israel’s military intelligence chief resigns, taking responsibility for Oct. 7 failures