A new biography tries to extinguish the myth of the kinder, gentler Trotsky
| 7:00 AM Nov 24, 2009
When Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City by an agent of Stalin, in 1940, the American novelist James T. Farrell took to the pages of Partisan Review to memorialize him. “The life of Leon Trotsky is one of the great tragic dramas of modern history,” Farrell’s obituary began, and it only gets more idolatrous ...
A literary—but none-too-sad—Keith Gessen talks about his new novel
| 12:00 PM Apr 22, 2008
Sam, one of the frustrated antiheroes of Keith Gessen’s new novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, spends most of his twenties attempting to write “the first great Zionist epic.” His peer Mark is stuck in Syracuse, stymied by his efforts to finish a dissertation on the Russian Revolution. The novel’s third protagonist, Keith, is ...
Jocheved sets up a snow-cone business
Seventy years after the release of his first book, the bestselling ‘As a Driven Leaf,’ Rabbi Milton Steinberg (posthumously) offers a sophomore effort
Wanted by the authorities, the twins head off to the Promised Land
On the eve of the Oscars, an endorsement of ‘The White Ribbon’
A new documentary discusses the legacy of a Nazi filmmaker with his heirs
The anti-‘Edge of Darkness’ email your relatives are forwarding
There are more similarities between Jewish music and Jewish food than meets the ear
At 86, blind and housebound, Fugs frontman Tuli Kupferberg is still dispensing crass words of wisdom
Two bands cultivate the ‘Afro-Judaic’ aesthetic
Making the web’s greatest Hanukkah film
The Fox cult hit ‘Glee’ is about outcasts and Broadway—so naturally it offers a Jewish storyline
Wallace Shawn on being Jewish—onscreen and off
William Kentridge and the art of righting history’s wrongs
At 50, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beth Sholom synagogue still glimmers—leaks and all
While trying on new artistic hat, artist develops series of paper coats
How Russian-Jewish émigrés are changing the face of competitive ballroom dance
How a latter-day vaudevillian from Kansas City got himself to speak perfect Yiddish
As it progressed, the playwright’s autobiographical trilogy grew more dark—and more true
