Yehudah Mirsky

Apr 26, 2024 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Benjamin Weiner |Akiva Schick |Yehudah Mirsky |Shai Held

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 560 pp., $35 At five o’clock in the afternoon, in James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom finds himself in a Dublin pub, arguing over the meaning of life with a band of incredulous Christians.

Jan 22, 2024 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Jonathan Karp |Yehudah Mirsky

A few weeks after the October 7 Black Sabbath massacre by Hamas, an ad from a group called U.S. Labor Against Racism and War showed up in my Facebook feed. How it found me, I’m not exactly sure, but there was nothing particularly surprising about it. My algorithms presumably define me as a progressive type, certainly pro–organized labor, and, if not a pacifist, then most definitely a peacenik.

Jan 16, 2024 | unherd.com | Yehudah Mirsky

Since the early 1600s, the Bavarian town of Oberammergau has, once a decade, mounted a massive Passion Play, dramatically re-enacting Jesus’s trial and crucifixion. Spread over five hours and with a cast of thousands, it has for centuries attracted audiences from far and wide. Central to the production, and to the Play’s notoriety, was the Jews’ thoroughgoingly demonic role in Jesus’s murder, well beyond the plain sense of the Gospels.

Dec 8, 2023 | hechoencalifornia1010.com | Yehudah Mirsky

Religions die hard. They promise something better, something truer, more powerful and lasting than our familiar cruelties, corruptions and deaths. Their traditions take shape over time; they develop rituals, build communities, give life order and meaning, and at their best bring forth genuine prophets and authentic saints. But eventually, the very things that keep religion going become their own idolatries, giving demonic cover for the very same cruelty and corruption religion sought to combat.

Dec 7, 2023 | unherd.com | Yehudah Mirsky

Religions die hard. They promise something better, something truer, more powerful and lasting than our familiar cruelties, corruptions and deaths. Their traditions take shape over time; they develop rituals, build communities, give life order and meaning, and at their best bring forth genuine prophets and authentic saints. But eventually, the very things that keep religion going become their own idolatries, giving demonic cover for the very same cruelty and corruption religion sought to combat.