Editor's Pick ·
Anti-Zionist Jews Reject Jewish Peoplehood and Survival
Not an argument for the sake of heaven.
Adam Kirsch
Adam Kirsch, a poet and literary critic, is the author of, among other books, Benjamin Disraeli and The People and The Books: Eighteen Classics of Jewish Literature.
Latest Content
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Was Simone Weil’s Abandonment of Judaism an Abandonment of the Jews?
The wicked daughter.
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The American Jewish Appetite for Art That Shames the Audience
Two old-new musicals.
Response ·
Anti-Semitism Appeals to Intellectuals Because It Feels Like an Idea
By Adam KirschGary Saul Morson’s characteristically learned and insightful essay on Dostoevsky raises the question of how a writer with such a profound understanding of good and evil could fall prey to such a rudim...
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I.J. Singer’s Portrait of an East European Jewish Civilization at Once Vibrant and Disappearing
The Nobel Prize-winner’s forgotten older brother.
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How George Steiner and Susan Sontag Got Rich and Famous by Being Jewish Pariahs
Ruthless cosmopolitans.
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Madness, Death, and Chaos in the Poems of Anthony Hecht
An American Jewish poet and his searing wartime experience.
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The Puzzle of Sigmund Freud’s Jewishness
A midrashic approach to dreams?
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Steven Spielberg’s Jewish Fable and Its Moral Universe
For Spielberg and Tony Kushner, Jews can only defend themselves by playing on Gentile guilt.
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Two Great Thinkers, Hounded from Germany as Jews, and Their Very Different Paths
Gershom Scholem chose Israel; Theodor Adorno returned to Germany.
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Anti-Semitism, Judaism, and the “Treason of the Intellectuals”
Julien Benda’s scribes without Torah.
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How Jewish Was Alexander Hamilton? And How Anti-Semitic Were His Contemporaries?
A new biography musters extensive circumstantial evidence that the founding father was born a Jew.
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Jacob El-Hanani’s Deeply Jewish Abstract Art
The minimalist and the circle-drawer.
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“The Slaughterman’s Daughter” Is an Unabashedly Zionist Novel of Jewish Eastern Europe
Sholem Aleichem meets Quentin Tarantino.
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The Founders of Modern Hebrew Literature Faced Challenges Tolstoy and Dostoevsky Never Had to Contend With—and Triumphed
The Lady of Hebrew and Her Lovers of Zion.
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What Is Jewish Literature, Anyway?
Finding the thread that connects Franz Kafka, Amos Oz, Saul Bellow, and Cynthia Ozick.
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Viennese Philosophy in the Shadow of Nazism
How anti-Semites pitted Wittgenstein’s “Jewish mathematicality” against the thought of Heidegger.
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An Epic Novel-Turned-Celebrated-Play Puts a Jewish Face on the Supposed Evils of Capitalism
The Lehman Trilogy repackages old anti-Semitism for a new audience.
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A New Fictional Take on the Classic Tale of the Aging Jewish Intellectual
Morningside Heights.
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Can Judaism Thrive If Cut Off from Its Talmudic Roots?
Thoughts on daily Talmud study not conducted “in the spirit of a believer.”
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Jews Surely Deserve a Potboiler Based on a Talmudic Legend
Even one that insists on seeing righteousness in ecological, rather than religious, terms.
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In the Talmud’s Most Difficult Tractate, the Rabbis Tackle Mathematical Probability
The case of the mixed-up sacrificial birds.
Response ·
Why Bellow Was the Least Jewish Writer of the Golden Age of American Jewish Fiction
By Adam KirschSaul Bellow didn’t like the word “task” as applied to literature: “tasks are for people who work in offices,” he once cracked. Yet Ruth R. Wisse’s survey in Mosaic of Bellow’s achievement as an Amer...
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A Lebanese Novelist’s Fictional Account of 1948 Fails as Both History and Literature
While comparing Jews to Nazis.
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Giorgio Bassani’s Literary Memorial to the Jews of Ferrara under Fascist Rule
Part Joyce, part Balzac, part yizkor book.
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Was Franz Kafka a Jewish Writer? An Israeli Court Said Yes
A legal case and its literary implications.
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A Talmudic Meditation on Government’s Responsibility to the Governed
Both kings and sages are servants.
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In an Age When Anyone Can Read the Torah on a Phone, Why Do Jews Keep Using Scrolls?
Black fire on white fire.
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Two Books Describe the Search for Family History in Poland
Righteous Gentile or victim of Jewish guile?
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The Ruined House: A Different Kind of Jewish Novel
An NYU professor channels the high priest.