Editor's Pick ·
How “Hester Street” Changed Its Source Material into a New Kind of Immigration Story
An 1896 Yiddish novel’s journey to Hollywood.
Michael Weingrad
Michael Weingrad is professor of Jewish studies at Portland State University and a frequent contributor to Mosaic and the Jewish Review of Books.
Latest Content
Editor's Pick ·
“The Way We Were” Flattens Jewish Identity
The moral flaws of a classic Barbra Streisand film.
Editor's Pick ·
What Makes American Jewish Fantasy Work, and What Doesn’t
From Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars to Cynthia Ozick.
Editor's Pick ·
Kabbalah, Prague, and the Fantasy That Jews Could Magically Hold Their Enemies in Abeyance
Leo Perutz’s By Night Under the Stone Bridge.
Editor's Pick ·
Hollywood’s Crisis of Jewish Masculinity
A rogues’ gallery of profoundly unlikeable characters.
Editor's Pick ·
Fantasy Fiction, Morality, and Jewish Self-Hatred
Michael Moorcock tries and fails to conquer his Jewish demons.
Editor's Pick ·
A Fantasy Novelist Imagines a Great Jewish Exile, and a Jewish Rebirth
Robert Nathan’s Road of Ages.
Editor's Pick ·
Avram Davidson’s Discovery of Judaism and Journey to Science-Fiction Fame
His fantasies contained only a few Jewish themes.
Editor's Pick ·
How a Bizarre Work of Apocalyptic Fiction Simultaneously Typifies British Anti-Semitism and Philo-Semitism
M.P. Shiel’s The Lord of the Sea.
Editor's Pick ·
A Different Kind of American Jewish Novelist, and His WASP Heaven
Robert Nathan, Sephardi fantasy writer.
Editor's Pick ·
The Great American Hebrew Novel
Maya Arad’s good years.
Editor's Pick ·
The Latest Work of Israel’s Leading Science-Fiction Writer Doesn’t Live Up to Its Promise
Tongue Untangled.
Editor's Pick ·
The Epic of the Gen-X Jewish Teen
Eugene Nadelman.
Editor's Pick ·
The (Implicitly) Jewish Character Who Serves as the Moral Anchor in “The Women”
A new look at Clare Boothe Luce’s hit play and film.
Editor's Pick ·
The Deracinated Jews of Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fantasy
A novel explores manifestations of religion, while ignoring its content.
Editor's Pick ·
The Jews of British Fantasy, from Walter Scott to J.R.R. Tolkien
A strange mixture of philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism.
Editor's Pick ·
A Shockingly Relevant Jazz-Age Tale of Sexual Revolution, and Its Portrait of Jews
Ex-Wife and The Divorcee.
Editor's Pick ·
The Long History of (Fictional) Jewish Magic
From medieval anti-Semitism to occult novels to a real-life Harry Potter character.
Observation ·
David Mamet’s Jewish Sensibility
By Michael WeingradCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
Two Jewish Fantasy Novels, Despite Their Respective Charms, Are Satisfied with Superficiality
A Tel Aviv hipster in King Arthur’s court.
Editor's Pick ·
One of Israel’s Greatest Caricaturists Tackles the European Jewish Past
Now in English.
Observation ·
Two Orthodoxies, and the Cultures They Create
By Michael WeingradCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
The Best Books of 2020, Chosen by Mosaic Authors (Part III)
By Gary Saul Morson, Yehoshua Pfeffer, Daniel Polisar, Neil Rogachevsky, Michael WeingradCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
A New Science-Fiction Movie Explores What Happens When the Future Goes to War with the Past
Tenet and the tenets of progressivism.
Editor's Pick ·
What African American Politics Illuminates about Jewish American Politics
A key component of both groups’ identities.
Editor's Pick ·
Stan Lee and the Jews behind the Superheroes
Even in comparison with other contributions to American popular culture, comic books tell an especially Jewish story.
Observation ·
Oberon’s Jewish Pedigree
By Michael WeingradCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
The Best Books of 2019, Chosen by Mosaic Authors (Part II)
By Martin Kramer, Sarah Rindner, Neil Rogachevsky, Michael Weingrad, Ruth R. Wisse, David WolpeCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Observation ·
The Sorry Significance of Susan Sontag
By Michael WeingradCommitted to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Editor's Pick ·
A Jewish Fantasy Writer’s Absent Zion
Guy Gavriel Kay created Devin Bar Garin, but couldn’t mention Ben-Gurion.