Jewish Review of Books
@jewishreviewbooks.bsky.social
A quarterly magazine of Jewish criticism, religion, and culture and monthly web-exclusive reviews and essays. Subscribe at https://www.ezsubscription.com/jrb/subscribe
Our Fall issue is now out in the world! Stay tuned for our online launch, next week.
My recent romp through the history of the Jewish cult of saints, is out with @jewishreviewbooks.bsky.social jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo... Visiting the Graves of the Righteous: Inns of Molten Blue - Jewish Review of Books
Visiting the Graves of the Righteous: Inns of Molten Blue - Jewish Review of Books
Graves of Tzaddikim hold many things—hopes, prayers, and sometimes even the deceased's body.
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Happy to announce the Spring issue, timely Passover- and other-wise, with discussion of war in Gaza and dissent against oppressive government, while also keeping our heads in the clouds, or at least in poetry about the strange air above a librarian’s ladder. jewishreviewofbooks.com/issue/spring...
Spring 2025 - Jewish Review of Books
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David and Benji are a classic odd couple, a little bit like Steve Martin and John Candy in 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles', except this time the trains are Polish and the characters are Jewish, which admittedly gives it all a different valence. Emil Stern's riotous review in our latest issue.
After seeing A Real Pain, I felt disappointed. This line resonates with me: "And this is the film’s real problem: It does not, or cannot, confront the actual, tortured history of Jews in Poland or the issue of Polish complicity in the Holocaust."
Jewish Review of Books@jewishreviewbooks.bsky.social · 2y agoWinter issue just dropped, with a book review by Adam Kirsch, movie review by Emil Stern, an essay by Malka Simkovitch, a necrology by Ben Balint, soccer hooligan memories by Mark Glanville, and much much more! jewishreviewofbooks.com/issue/winter...
Winter issue just dropped, with a book review by Adam Kirsch, movie review by Emil Stern, an essay by Malka Simkovitch, a necrology by Ben Balint, soccer hooligan memories by Mark Glanville, and much much more! jewishreviewofbooks.com/issue/winter...
Winter 2025 - Jewish Review of Books
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jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-life/... Reviel Netz on the remarkable story of the Chabad menorah and its critical meaning, from Roman imperial art to medieval diagrams in Maimonides, his son Abraham, the Yemenite scholar R’ Kapah, Israeli critics, and abstract expressionists, too. A wild journey.
Straightening Out the Menorah - Jewish Review of Books
The long journey from Maimonides’s Medieval Drawing to the Rebbe’s Abstract Public Monuments
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We just put our winter issue to bed and the writing really sparkles. This one has quite a cast of character, ranging from French Jewish radicals to soccer hooligans to a persnickety book reviewer (no, not one who's written for JRB). Now's the time to subscribe! www.ezsubscription.com/jrb/subscribe
Subscribe for $24.95 off and get a free JRB tote bag! (While supplies last.)
The leading publication for Jewish intellectuals.
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In spending a life pondering why talmudic arguments often turned on unlikely interpretations, Halivni was not merely asking what motivated talmudic passages; he was trying to explain the literary character of the bedrock text of rabbinic Judaism, and his life. jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo...
Like a Surgeon with a Scalpel, an Archaeologist with a Spade - Jewish Review of Books
David Weiss Halivni once rescued a scrap from a page of the Shulchan Arukh from the sandwich paper of a Nazi guard. His whole life turned out to be about rescuing texts.
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“I want to be your wife,” she tells the alarmed Dustin. “To stuff you with Thanksgiving turkey.” A review of Galit Dahan Carlibach’s wicked novel, “Zot ani, Iowa (It’s Me, Iowa)”, and Maya Arad’s “The Hebrew Teacher” jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/343...
Lost in America
Two new books, different in tone but matched in caliber, show Israelis making their way as best they can in America and in life.
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An almost decade-old review of "Pumpkinflowers," Matti Friedman's micro-history and memoir about an otherwise unremarkable site in the history of Israeli military adventures in Lebanon. jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/227...
A Cedar of Lebanon - Jewish Review of Books
In addition to the weight survivors feel, Friedman bears the burden of giving voice to the place that shaped young men’s lives and took others, while leaving no official trace.
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Maybe Israelis are widely anathematized because they are perceived as evil, colonizing Europeans. Or perhaps it's their ambiguous position as not quite settlers, not quite indigenous—hence a sense of the uncanny—which leads to anti-Israeli hatred and disgust? jewishreviewofbooks.com/american-jew...
Of “Good Jews” and Bad Binaries - Jewish Review of Books
Anti-Israeli bigots do not hate Israel because they believe the worst about its actions. They feel an urge to believe the worst about Israeli actions because they hate Israel.
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When Bellow met Agnon in Jerusalem, "[Agnon] asked me if any of my books had been translated into Hebrew. If they had not been, I had better see to it immediately, because, he said, they would survive only in the Holy Tongue." They were speaking in Yiddish. jewishreviewofbooks.com/american-jew...
A Good Golus - Jewish Review of Books
“Well,” he said, “this is a good little golus you’ve got here.”
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Did Bendahan write a modernist novel, an ethnographic portrait of Tetouani Sephardi life, or maybe, a brilliant and ambivalent piece of feminist fiction repurposing the old (antisemitic and antifeminist) trope of the beautiful Jewess? J Kornberg on "Mazaltob" jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo...
The Jewess Mystique - Jewish Review of Books
An early feminist novel about a North African Jewish damsel in (Jewish) distress.
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Sit in on a meeting of the board of any Jewish organization or watch the Knesset Channel...and you will find ample confirmation that Jewish politics is messy. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Prof. Elisheva Carlebach on the Jewish Political Tradition. jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/601...
Tradition and Invention - Jewish Review of Books
If Jews were included in early 20th-century discussions of political communities, it was generally concerning their right to preserve their language and culture, along with other minorities, at a time when empires were being dismantled.
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Today is the Yahrzeit of the late Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Rabbi Sacks reviewed in our pages the English literary theorist, Terry Eagleton's, 2016 book, "Culture and the Death of God." jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/100...
The London crowd was delighted to hear that the young poet would be reading an ode to T. S. Eliot; then, as if on cue, the great man entered the hall. “Eminence becomes you,” began Litvinoff. But then, oh dear . . . Jack Omer-Jackaman in the Fall issue. jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo...
Tread Lightly Lest My People’s Bones Protest: Litvinoff, Eliot, and English Antisemitism - Jewish Review of Books
The London crowd was delighted to hear that the young poet would be reading an ode to T. S. Eliot; then, as if on cue, the great man entered the hall. “Eminence becomes you,” began Litvinoff. But then...
jewishreviewofbooks.com
Ayn Rand imagined that her romantic prose soared. In truth, not only did her anti-communist prose barely schlepp along, it mirrored Soviet Socialist Realism. Read GS Morson's review of A Popoff, "Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success" in our Fall issue. jewishreviewofbooks.com/literature/1...
Atlas Schlepped - Jewish Review of Books
Ayn Rand imagined that her romantic prose soared, but it barely schlepped along.
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