Aggrieved political wives have a long, sad history in this country, and in Judaism. From King David to Bill Clinton, betrayed wives have, sadly, become part of the fabric of the entitlement that surrounds powerful men. And in Judaism, figures like King David’s conquests have been, in some quarters, celebrated as evidence of his virility….
Since Vanity Fair released the “Call Me Caitlyn” cover on Monday, you’ve probably seen a flurry of comments about it on social media: some full of “YAAAS GIRL” positivity, and others spouting some variation on “This is still a man named Bruce Jenner and there’s not a feminization surgery or Annie Leibovitz photoshoot in the…
Even if one is naturally curious, one often accepts strange things unquestioningly for what they are. I suppose that’s why I never wondered about the odd phrase di linke peye, “the left ear lock,” in the Yiddish expression ikh hob es in der linker peye, “I have it in the left ear lock,” or es…
Actress Blake Lively recently launched a website called Preserve, which aims to promote an artisanal lifestyle through the posting of recipes, craft projects and style profiles, and to sell a variety of food and clothing items. Because Preserve genuinely desires “to give back to those with fewer opportunities but just as much heart and soul…
Maimonides is trending these days. The 12th century sage, once confined to musty tomes and talmudic study halls, is being brandished in the opinion pages of The New York Times, cited on the airwaves in “This American Life,” and featured in Dara Horn’s latest novel. By some measures, Maimonides is at the height of his…
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…
● Norman Mailer, A Double Life By J. Michael Lennon Simon & Schuster, 960 pages, $40 While reading the first chapter of “Norman Mailer, A Double Life,” the exhaustive (and exhausting) new biography of the great man by J. Michael Lennon, I discovered that during his formative years, from the age of nine through his…
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby took to Twitter to thank all those helping in the search for his missing teenage son — and plead for more help in the case. The dad’s poignant plea came as police continued to hunt for Caleb Jacoby, an 11th grader at Maimonides School in the Boston suburb of Brookline,…
