Jewish Review of Books

28/10/2024

"Matisyahu might have seemed like a novelty act to Kimmel and friends, but Shake Off the Dust . . . Arise, the debut album he recorded while studying in a Chabad yeshiva, hit number four on the US charts and number one on the reggae charts. For a while, Matisyahu was American Judaism’s biggest star, with four albums in the top forty and global tours that brought him and his beard to Israel, Spain, Norway, Australia, and Japan. Twenty years after the release of his astonishing first album, Matisyahu, though in a very different incarnation, is still rocking."

Read "The Lion of Judah" by Akiva Schick https://tinyurl.com/ef6zbwj7

23/10/2024

Is Genesis all about Eve? Check out the link in our bio to find out.

23/10/2024

Is Genesis all about Eve?

What did Eve really want and what did Adam need?

21/10/2024

"I had participated Simchat Torah all my life, but the symbolic significance of dancing while holding the Torah and dancing while holding a child had not occurred to me until I thought deeply about the Central European minhag of binding the Torah with the baby’s circumcision cloth. Why were Torah and children paired? How did the central ritual object of Judaism become associated with the male child?"

Read Harvey E. Goldberg's full article here: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/torah/17216/of-torahs-and-children/

16/10/2024

What's the deal the etrogs? Take a look back through our archives to find out more about why we use this unusual fruit. Check out the link in our bio.

07/10/2024

I said "this wasn’t in the aliyah handbook ” He replied instantly. “No, it wasn’t in the aliyah handbook, but it was in all the history books.”

If we knew anything at all about Jewish—and even recent Israeli—history, why were we so surprised on October 7?

01/10/2024

Don't miss the amazing articles in our new fall issue! Shai Secunda considers the towering legacy of David Weiss Halivni, Roslyn Weiss asks if the Creation story is really all about Eve, Emil Stern looks for any Jews in a Hollywood museum, and more!

Letters, Fall 2024 Statement on Anti-Israelism and Academic Jewish Studies; Invisible Truth; Union Seders; and Notes on Camp

30/09/2024

Can American Jewry survive without unprecedented change? Is Hollywood embarrassed by its Jewish founders? Was Matisyahu's beard the source of all his power? Read the newest issue of the Jewish Review of books to find out!

Letters, Fall 2024 Statement on Anti-Israelism and Academic Jewish Studies; Invisible Truth; Union Seders; and Notes on Camp

25/09/2024

Rabbi Shai Held joined the Jewish Review of Books Podcast to discuss God's love, Jewish life, and the ways to reclaim an ancient value.

Rabbi Shai Held joins the Jewish Review of Books Podcast to discuss his new book, "Judaism is About Love."

17/09/2024

Congrats to Alex Edelman on his Emmy Award!

Now is a great time to revisit Noah Millman's 2022 review of "Just for Us."

​​It all started with a tweet: “Curious about your whiteness? Come to our meeting.” Edelman was curious.

05/09/2024

Joshua Leifer’s much-anticipated new book made an even larger splash than originally expected when a Brooklyn bookstore employee cancelled a scheduled event. Can his book explain why that happened?

Joshua Leifer’s much-anticipated new book made an even larger splash than originally expected when a Brooklyn bookstore employee cancelled a scheduled event. Can his book explain why that happened?

19/08/2024

It’s been twenty-five years since Larry David first strutted and fretted his way in front of the camera, appearing on Curb Your Enthusiasm, an HBO show whose title seemed to announce a particular kind of lowering of expectations, which bordered on, well, self-hatred. When Curb first aired in 1999, David was familiar to comedy connoisseurs as co-creator and co–head writer of Seinfeld—and the guy who failed to stick the landing of the iconic series. (David had returned to Seinfeld after a several-year hiatus to write a hugely controversial outro that threw the show’s famous quartet of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer in jail for what amounted to serial misanthropy)

A generation has now been born and grown to young adulthood who know and even love Larry David for his solo work, the stuff he did after the band broke up. Curb and David are household names (the latter’s woolly fringe of hair, framing a magnificent bald head and round glasses, became so recognizable that HBO took to advertising the show with his cranial silhouette alone).

Last year, when Curb’s twelfth season launched, David announced that the show had finally reached its natural end (after all, he might have noted, it had reached 120 episodes). And so it seems like a good time to pose the question: Was it good for the Jews? Or given how good the show often was, what sort of good was it for the Jews (and Jewish comedy)?

Is Larry David good for the Jews?

12/08/2024

On the latest episode of the Jewish Review of Books Podcast, we spoke with Oren Kessler, author of the Sami Rohr Prize-winning book "Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict."

Oren dives into the history of this nearly forgotten revolt, and the outsized role it played in shaping the dynamics that still exist in Israel today. Listen on Spotify or iTunes.

On today's episode of the Jewish Review of Books Podcast, Abe is joined by Oren Kessler, author of the Sapir Award-winning book Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict. Oren dives into the history of this nearly forgotten revolt, and the outsized role it played in....

25/07/2024

If anything ties Barbra Streisand's new memoir together, it's the author's intense need for control.

If anything ties Barbra Streisand's new memoir together, it's the author's intense need for control.

24/07/2024

Cole S. Aronson attended a debate between a Haredi rabbi and a group of religious Zionists. It didn't go well, but was revealing in unexpected ways.

Cole S. Aronson attended a debate between a Haredi rabbi and a group of religious Zionists. It didn't go well, but was revealing in unexpected ways.

23/07/2024

The first time Alfred Nakache died, it was in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The second time, it was in the water, where he was most at home.

The first time Alfred Nakache died, it was in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The second time, it was in the water, where he was most at home.

15/07/2024

Our Summer issue is here! And with it, questions galore. Was a Jewish Civil War general a fraud? Did a book from the 1950s fix American antisemitism? Why don't summer camps drop flyers by air over rival camps anymore? You'll have to read to find out!

Letters, Summer 2024 Marginally Nabokov Thank you for Allegra Goodman’s excellent review of Maya Arad’s newly translated collection of novellas, The Hebrew Teacher (“Od Tireh, Od Tireh . . .,” Spring 2024). I…

20/06/2024

"I took my first novel to Israel with me, and when a suitcase bomb exploded twenty meters away from me at the Munich airport, I shielded the manuscript with my body." Maxim Biller remembers his youth in Munich.

I took my first novel to Israel with me, and when a suitcase bomb exploded twenty meters away from me at the Munich airport, I shielded the manuscript with my body. My sister didn’t read it until just before I left. Then she said: “I thought Thomas Mann was dead. Anyway, if you ask me, he’s no...

05/06/2024

Herman Melville was unimpressed with Jerusalem in 1857, but what would he say if he were a saunterer on Mamilla or King George today?

  Herman Melville was unimpressed with Jerusalem in 1857, but what would he say if he were a saunterer on Mamilla or King George today?

03/06/2024

The fraught project of becoming an American pulses through Susan Rubine Suleiman’s memoir, along with the similarly fraught project of becoming an adult.

The fraught project of becoming an American pulses through Susan Rubine Suleiman’s memoir, along with the similarly fraught project of becoming an adult.

24/05/2024

In the technical halakhic sense, Lag BaOmer is not really a festival, and it is not attested to in any of the classical sources. So how did the Hilula de-Rashbi, as the Meron Lag BaOmer celebration is called, become such a large, and largely Hasidic, pilgrimage—and rave?

In the technical halakhic sense, Lag BaOmer is not really a festival, and it is not attested to in any of the classical sources. So how did the Hilula de-Rashbi, as the Meron Lag BaOmer celebration is called, become such a large, and largely Hasidic, pilgrimage—and rave?