Response To December’s EssayBy Hillel Halkin, Jonathan Silver, Andrew Koss
January 8, 2026
The Mind and Man Behind Philologos
A conversation about Jews and language.
From 1988 until last September, Hillel Halkin—using the pseudonym Philologos—wrote regular columns exploring Jewish language, fielding etymological and semantic questions from countles readers. Those columns began appearing in Mosaic in 2015. In December, we published an essay by Halkin examining his career as Philologos. Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver and senior editor Andrew Koss sat down with Halkin to discuss the essay on December 29, 2025. The video and transcript of that conversation is below.
