Halkin and Wisse and Shulevitz, Oh My!

Another quarter, another issue of the Jewish Review of Books. To read all the articles, you should subscribe (or, alternatively, go work at a daily magazine of Jewish life and culture—The New York Times, say—that subscribes for you). But many of the newest articles are available online. Here are some favorites.

• Our most favorite, of course, is the rave that esteemed intellectual Robert Alter gives to Hillel Halkin’s biography of Yehuda Halevi, published by Nextbook Press. “His biography,” says Alter, “with the translations it incorporates”—and Alter knows a thing or two about translating!—“gives us a vivid and persuasive sense of Yehuda Halevi that should make him more real and more understandable than he has been until now.” [“All the Good Things of Spain”]

• Ruth Wisse, author of Nextbook Press’s Jews and Power, remembers the great Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever and the great Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich. [“The Poet from Vilna”]

• Walter Russell Mead explores Christian Zionism. [“Friends of Zion”]

• Anne Trubek reviews Allegra Goodman’s forthcoming novel, which was inspired by Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. [“Going Public”]

• Martin Kavka reviews Judith Shulevitz’s book on the Sabbath (which we podcast’d). [“Old-New Sabbath”]

• Ben Birnbaum slams Milton Steinberg’s posthumous novel, which staff writer Marissa Brostoff reported on. [“The Prophet’s Wife”]