This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The American writer Joshua Cohen’s last two books, Book of Numbers and Witz, were considerable epic novels that dealt with philosophical issues through a mix of satirical realism and grotesque fantasy. But his new book, “Moving Kings” (both a name of a company and an allegorical key),…
When one of my sons (I won’t say which, to protect his anonymity) was small, if asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, his answer was always the same: an astronaut, a chef and a daddy. I wonder how many people, asked that very question, would answer “a rabbi and a chocolate…
My journey, both personally and professionally, in Orthodox and non-Orthodox circles alike, has introduced me to a surprising divide, one that does not map neatly onto the denominational divide but evokes diverging passions that grow more animated as one moves from right to left. Namely: The practice of reading in shul. Every year I try…
So you’re invited out for a Rosh Hashanah meal — and you’re stuck as to what to bring? We’ve got you covered. For The Gourmand We’re itching for a copy of celebrity Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s Sweet (his publisher should have timed the release better, with the chief holiday of sweets upon us now), but…
I was not raised in modern Orthodoxy; I married into it. And as I read Tova Mirvis’ memoir, The Book of Separation, it often felt as though I was reading my own misgivings and hesitations. Her book opens with a chronicling of her first Rosh Hashanah, after leaving her marriage and Orthodox Judaism. Mirvis grew…
There’s a concept in the early Zionist writings that still haunts contemporary Jewish life. It’s the belief that the Diaspora Jew is an outmoded kind of Jew. Weak and effeminate from too much studying, he is submissive and abject, always apologizing to the gentiles who hate him. As opposed to this Diaspora Jew, the early…
I am going back to the mountaintop. In three weeks, I will return to Charlottesville, Virginia. It is not because last Saturday it became the site of an American pogrom. Last weekend dozens of people were injured during violence sparked by the Unite the Right rally and counter-protests. Two law enforcement officers were killed in…
BERLIN (JTA) — A new search in Germany for books stolen from Jews during the Third Reich is beginning to bear fruit. Recently, a man in California who was the only survivor of the Holocaust in his family received a book from Germany that had been dedicated to him by a teacher. The only other…
Disgraced ‘alt-right’ provocateur Milo Yiannapoulos hired dwarfs wearing yarmulkes to perform at a New York book launch party as part of an elaborate stunt to mock an observant Jewish rival. Yiannapoulos used the dwarfs to ridicule Ben Shapiro, the editor of the conservative website The Daily Wire, at a Thursday night shindig for his new…
In 1951, the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt published “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” her 600-page twin study of Nazism and Stalinism. The book received rave reviews; Norman Podhoretz, the Jewish New York intellectual, compared it to an epic poem. Then, 66 years later, in December of last year, Arendt’s book began selling at 16 times its…
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To read the previous chapter. And so after some perfunctory small talk, an appointment was arranged. Yankel would meet with someone called Leah Spielman (he scribbled this into his small appointment book), daughter of Abe and Helen Spielman, refugees from the Old World, now living in Flatbush. “Appointment”…
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