Jonathan Silver

Oct 1, 2024 | mosaicmagazine.com | Meir Soloveichik |Jonathan Silver

The Jewish world is dynamic and diverse, and prayers, ceremonies, foods, and other traditions often diverge radically between different Jewish groups. In his feature essay this month, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik explores how these differences influence him, when, as a Jew of Ashkenazi descent, he was charged with overseeing High High Holy Day prayers at the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue where he serves as rabbi, which maintained traditions radically different from those with which he grew up.

Jul 18, 2024 | mosaicmagazine.com | Scott Abramson |Haviv Rettig Gur |Jonathan Silver

Why did Israel’s intelligence agencies fail to prepare for the attacks of October 7? Why were warnings ignored? Why didn’t the defensive measures in place work? Could the IDF have responded more quickly, and more effectively, once disaster struck? And how did the political and military establishment convince itself that Hamas was deterred in the first place? These questions have plagued Israelis, and many others, since October 7.

Jun 6, 2024 | mosaicmagazine.com | Andrew Koss |Jonathan Silver

As university campuses witnessed an eruption of anti-Semitism this year, scholars of Jewish studies were for the most part strangely silent. In his May 2024 feature essay, Mosaic senior editor Andrew Koss explains why. Looking closely at how Jewish studies has been influenced by broader trends in the academy, he shows how the field lost its way. To discuss his argument, Koss was joined by Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver as well as UCLA Jewish history professor David Myers on Thursday, May 30.

Dec 21, 2023 | mosaicmagazine.com | Hussein Aboubakr |Andrew Koss |Jonathan Silver |Meir Soloveichik

To mark the close of 2023, we asked several of our writers to name the best books they’ve read this year, and briefly to explain their choices. The second group of their answers appears below. Part I appeared yesterday and is available here. (Unless otherwise noted, all books were published in 2023. Classic books are listed by their original publication dates.)In The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power (Yale, 152pp., $26), Robert D.

Dec 20, 2023 | mosaicmagazine.com | Jonathan Silver

Pick Print Email Kindle Some 50,000 soldiers serving in the IDF will soon receive a booklet, titled “Why I am a Jew,” that contains a chapter from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s book Radical Then, Radical Now. That the late British chief rabbi’s words have such appeal to young men and women on the frontlines is testimony to the power of his words for the Jewish people, whose fate now lies in these brave soldiers’ hands. But Sacks also possessed an unrivaled ability to share Jewish wisdom with the...