Children’s Books
Elie Wiesel’s Night and Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird established the child’s perspective as a useful lens for confronting the Holocaust
The Non-Belonger
Alfred Kazin brought out the Jew in Emerson, the mystic in sex, and the terrible beauty in community. There’s no better guide for the “social me” age.
Force of Life
As the great French intellectual Simone Weil understood, modern life is all about work and war. Memorial Day and Labor Day, then, are perfect opportunities to take stock of our modern condition.
A Cut Above
Orly Castel-Bloom’s Dolly City is the most important Israeli novel of the last four decades




