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Manoel Dias Soeiro was born in Lisbon in 1604 into an outwardly Roman Catholic family that had been forced by the Inquisition to abandon its Jewish faith and practices
Micah Goodman has been called “Israel’s philosopher” and “a prophet of the nation’s angst.”
Simon Levis Sullam, who teaches modern history at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, has written a well-researched book that shatters the widely-held belief that Italians were brava gente, ...
Martin Fletcher, the former NBC bureau chief in Israel, describes his 409-page novel in three words: “Exodus meets ‘Dallas.’” And indeed it is.
What do we choose to show to others, and what do we keep hidden? How do we curate our public face?
I am approaching my fiftieth wedding anniversary, but I have vague memories from my long-ago youth of what it’s like to fall in love at first sight. Such experiences did not end well for me;...
David R. Gillham’s Annelies: A Novel (Viking and Penguin Books) is a fictionalized portrayal of Anne Frank based on the premise that she recovers from her illness in Bergen-Belsen,...
In this re-telling of the life of Jeremiah, the second major prophet in the Hebrew Bible, Dror Burstein, an Israeli poet and novelist who teaches literature at Tel Aviv and Hebrew universities,...
In Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs: Episodes from the Margins of Jewish History, Pini Dunner provides a series of bizarre stories describing how some Jews crashed through conventional...
Judy Glickman Lauder’s photographs in Beyond the Shadows: The Holocaust and the Danish Exception are so masterfully crafted they make us feel as if we ourselves are on the train tracks...
Many American Jews shuddered as Donald Trump proclaimed, “The American Dream is dead!” and “America first!” to rally crowds during his 2016 presidential campaign. We remembered how, in the late...
I remember a Christian colleague, who occupied an office next to mine, once asking me, "Why didn't the Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah?" I started to explain what life was like in Palestine in the...
Americans generally relate the term “emancipation” to the liberation of African-American slaves during the Civil War—but Michael Goldfarb, a London-based journalist and former bureau chief of NPR,...
Namdar tells the story of what happened to what were once perfect houses.
In his fascinating and eminently readable new book, Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books(Jewish Publication Society, 2016), Rabbi Mark Glickman reminds us that Jews have always...
Phyllis Rose’s book Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters (part of Yale’s Jewish Lives series) brings her subject out of the shadows and into his deserved place in...
In his highly readable and concise biography – Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press) – of the famous philosopher, Paul Mendes-Flohr, chief editor of the 22...
Weighing in at more than five pounds and offering up more than 500 pages of text and illustrations, Venice, The Jews and Europe: 1516-2016 (Rizzoli) is a comprehensive and valuable...
Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Our Ancestors) stands out among the 63 tractates of the Mishnah as a treatise devoted to ethical exhortation and guidance. Some scholars claim it was originally a manual...
Sometimes a book arrives at a necessary moment, a moment in which it can become part of the public conversation and help set the stage for political arguments to come. The Lions’ Den: Zionism...
Rabbi Stephen Fuchs and his wife, Victoria, had a choice to make, a choice that would transform their lives. Should they cut all ties with Germany, where their parents were born and survived the...
German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller is best known for his celebrated confession. These oft-quoted words at Holocaust commemorative observances might lead you to believe that Niemöller was...
Ayelet Tsabari’s beloved father died suddenly shortly before her tenth birthday. She cites this traumatic event as the reason for her quest to find a permanent home and to find herself – the life...
What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? What did it mean to be a Jewish woman throughout American history? These are questions Dr. Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and...
In her new book, Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures (Yale University Press), essayist and biographer Adina Hoffman captures the turbulent life of one of America’s most talented and prolific...
Having recently returned from a trip to the Polish town of my mother’s childhood, I was eager to see Mayer Kirshenblatt’s paintings of Jewish life in prewar Poland on exhibit at the Jewish Museum...
On Friday mornings, Rabbi Ed Feinstein explains, he used to tell stories to the children in the Jewish day school where he served as principal, and on Friday nights, he gave sermons at his...
In 1986, representatives of the Organization of Partisans, Underground Fighters and Ghetto Rebels in Israel approached Holocaust scholar Nechama Tec to write a historical account of the Bielski...
Winner of a Sami Rohr Choice Award, Ilana Blumberg’s memoir explores the tensions, struggles, and dreams of a young Jewish woman trying to find her place within Judaism.
Thomas Buergenthal, the American judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague, is a scholar in the post-Holocaust field of international law and human rights. He is also a child...
The U.S. and Israel, allies for more than 70 years, are sometimes at odds on specific policies and actions. Yaakov Katz’s new book Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to...
Sarah Blake’s The Guest Book (Flatiron Books) spans three generations of an old-line Protestant family, the Miltons, whose manners and way of life represent what they believe to be the...
Karl Marx! The name conjures up an intimidating bearded revolutionary intent on violently overthrowing society. Shlomo Avineri, professor emeritus of political science at the Hebrew University,...
How does Reform Judaism deal with the emerging issues in bioethics? What are the requirements and rituals for conversion? Can same-sex marriages be performed by Reform rabbis? Who can play a role...
In his new book, Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client, Alan Dershowitz underscores his love affair with and his passionate defense of the world’s...
This books tells the story of the Papal State’s 300-year effort to forcibly convert the Jews of Rome to Catholicism. The officially sanctioned campaign included kidnapping youngsters, harsh...
Hitler (Oxford University Press) is the definitive biography of Adolf Hitler. Despite its length, Longerich’s book is no ornamental “door stopper;” it is, rather, an “eye opener...
Tom Segev’s voluminous biography, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, gives new meaning to the Latin phrase – carpe diem – seize the day. That is just what David...
In Pain (Other Press) gifted writer Zeruya Shalev explores human pain amid heightened emotional awareness as the protagonist Iris finds herself in a second-chance love affair in middle...
Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), by prominent historian of the Sephardic community, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, tells the riveting story of...
The title of Professor Dov Waxman’s new book, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know, hides an important tension that gets explained in the course of reading this book,...
This second edition of Rabbi David J. Zucker’s American Rabbis: Facts and Fiction (Wipf & Stock) chronicles the role of rabbis in Jewish life, past and present.
Palace intrigue, ethnic cleansing, murder, unrequited love, and the quest for new lands and their riches are all woven together in Michael James Kaplan's novel By Fire and By Water. The story...
