More in ‘Genesis’

• Days after nixing the term “Rabba” for ordained female Orthodox rabbis, the Rabbinical Council of America agreed to the term “Maharat.” Agudath Israel called this “capitulation” “deeply dismaying.” [Press Release]
• David Kimche, a longtime Mossad member who rose to Foreign Ministry Director General, and who in later life backed the two-state solution and J ...

The Jewish Review of Books just published its inaugural issue, and the new quarterly journal looks to be worth bookmarking. In name, content, and even look, its clear inspiration is the New York Review of Books; like that venerable publication, it consists of extended essays on books and ideas by leading intellectual lights. Only, you ...

The blog Effect Measure, focused on public-health issues, over the weekend turned up a YouTube video of modern-day biblical scholar Ricky Gervais holding forth on the book of Genesis. The British comedian casts God as a brilliant magician who screws up and “goes mental,” and the snake in the Garden of Eden as the lucky ...

I guess I just wondered why he did this project. >>

The haftorah, the new subject of this column, is a bit of scripture read as an addendum to the weekly Torah portion. While there are several theories as to its historical origin, the idea itself is audacious: rather than have a single text to scrutinize, let there be two, thematically linked and complementary. Let there ...

Bookforum offers one of the first reviews of Robert Crumb’s illustrated version of Genesis, and it sounds like a winner. Crumb’s interpretation departs from other graphic representations of the Torah by not bowdlerizing it, writes Jeet Heer; the legendary artist “doesn’t hide the fact that the holy book is filled with stories of incest (Abraham ...

2009 · 4 minutes
Aboard Noah’s ark, some of God’s creatures won’t get with the program.
Written by Stephen Levinson and Joel Moss Levinson. Animation by Ed Mundy. Illustration by Mike Herrod. Music by Craig Hillelson. Sound engineering by Jesse Novak. Featuring the voices of Bob Balaban, Aaron Bleyaert, Jonathan Katz, Jess Lane, Jesse Novak, ...

New Yorkers rarely like their neighbors. Heck, most of us don’t even know ‘em.
Ensconced as we are in small apartments in large apartment buildings, we only hear our neighbors when they’re being too loud too late at night, only see them when we groggily bump into each other when picking up the morning paper ...

Dear Reader,
As you read this column, 2009 will have dawned in all its glory. Quite likely, it is already Friday or Saturday, and you, I hope, have had the chance to tear off the last of your hangover’s thin webs, to write down those new year’s resolutions, to bid adieu to the holiday season, ...

One of the more charming aspects of the recent financial meltdown is the strong correlation, now clearly exposed, between the Dow and divorce.
Having barely had a chance to explore the reasons for and consequences of the catastrophe, our earnest journalists turned their attention away from the bland boardrooms of Wall Street and towards the living ...