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Tablet’s Top Ten Stories for 2017

An entirely subjective list

by
The Editors
December 26, 2017

Tablet Top Ten: An entirely subjective list, presented in no particular order, of our 10 favorite articles from Tablet’s Arts & Culture and News & Politics sections in 2017. “Favorite” here means somewhere at the nexus of these pieces’ intrinsic merits and the measurable ways that readers engaged with them. If you caught them when they came out, they bear re-reading. If you missed them, you’re in for a treat. We present two a day through the end of 2017. Happy New Year, everyone.

Tuesday: Two discoveries: the surprising origins of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and a lost story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Wednesday: Two luminary women, reassessed: Lady Adele Meyer, in John Singer Sargent’s iconic portrait, and Sabina Spielrein, whose intellectual legacy was erased by the domineering men in her profession.

Thursday: Two enigmatic and inimitable masters of their cinematic craft, in revealing profiles: Jean-Pierre Melville and Frederick Wiseman.

Friday: Two twin evils: Islamism and anti-Semitism: the cases of Syrian Jihadi Fabien Clain and American activist Linda Sarsour.

Sunday: Two visionary iconoclasts and the disasters they chronicled: late Trump reporter Wayne Barrett and the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, Kalonymous Kalman Shapira.

From the editors of Tablet Magazine.