Jewish Review of Books

The Jewish Review of Books is a quarterly magazine that is also available online, catering to dedicated readers who are interested in Jewish topics.

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Purim Illuminated

1 month ago | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Jenna Weissman Joselit |Akiva Schick |Matthue Roth |Shai Secunda

Purim—the whole shebang, from the ancient story on which the holiday is based to the contemporary ways in which it’s celebrated—always struck me as raucous and overegged. After seeing the Jewish Museum’s latest revelation of an exhibition, The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt, I just might change my mind.
A Tragic Epilogue

2 months ago | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Matti Friedman |Akiva Schick |A.E. Smith

In JRB’s Winter 2024 issue, I published an essay looking at the great Hebrew memoir of the Yom Kippur War, Adjusting Sights, through the lens of the new war in which we Israelis now find ourselves.
Look Ma, No Hands!

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Jesse Tisch |Akiva Schick |Joseph Epstein |Abraham Socher

Free Press 304 pp., $29.99 Simon & Schuster 464 pp., $20.99 Memoir is risky business. Its reputation? Slightly dubious. Its vices? Vanity, indiscretion, omission. Don’t trust it, said Orwell, unless it reveals something shameful. Even then, you might wonder why someone probes their past, poking around in the attic of their psyche. Why not let demons rest? If anyone understands these hazards, it’s Joseph Epstein, a great practitioner and skeptic of personal writing.
Scattered Seeds: The Origins of Diaspora

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Malka Simkovich |Akiva Schick |Hillel Halkin |Yossi Shain

In the late third century BCE, a group of scholars working on a translation project in Egypt invented a Greek word that would change the course of Jewish—and arguably human— history. The project was to render the Hebrew Torah into Koine Greek. According to a second-century BCE novella called the Letter of Aristeas, the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus (the son of Alexander the Great’s general) commissioned a Greek translation of the Torah for the royal library.
Dusting Off the Old Stories

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Richard Kreitner |Akiva Schick |Aryeh Tepper

Oxford University Press 344 pp., $35 There is one shelf in the somewhat neglected corner library of my synagogue’s kiddush room that I like to think bears the implied label “Americana,” spelled out in invisible Hebrew letters. Here one finds some of the classic centuries-spanning surveys, such as Howard M.
Boy Meets Girl Meets Apocalypse

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Akiva Schick |Elli Fischer |Matti Friedman

Avid Reader Press 304 pp., $28 The destruction of the State of Israel has never been so popular. Murderous Hamas terrorists infiltrate the country, Iranian and Hezbollah rockets blanket the sky, student protestors call for intifada, and American Jewish writers turn the land over to welter and waste. Or a black hole.
Jewish Review of Books

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Emil Stern |Akiva Schick |Maud Kozodoy

Theodor Adorno said there could be no poetry after Auschwitz, but he didn’t say anything about buddy movies, which, I guess, is an argument in favor of A Real Pain. The film follows two cousins, anxious, fussy David (Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote and directed the film) and the appealing but erratic Benji (Kieran Culkin in a lucid, sincere performance), who go on a heritage tour of Jewish Poland after the death of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.
A Need for Roots

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Adam Kirsch |Akiva Schick |Arthur A. Cohen |Jacob Taubes

Belknap Press 384 pp., $37.95 In the French edition of Simone Weil’s collected works published by Gallimard, a volume is devoted to “Family Correspondence,” consisting of letters Weil wrote to her parents, Bernard and Selma, and her older brother, André, a brilliant mathematician. These have now been translated into English under the title A Life in Letters, but what is most interesting and important about Weil’s life can be deduced from these letters only by omission.
Bellow after Gaza: Rereading To Jerusalem and Back

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Elliot Kaufman |Akiva Schick |Amichai Chasson

The real Jerusalem syndrome isn’t the one your tour guide told you about. It’s what Saul Bellow experienced on his 1975 trip. “When I came to Jerusalem I thought to take it easy,” he writes in To Jerusalem and Back. “But no one takes it easy here.” He wrote to a friend, “My intention was to wander about the Old City and sit contemplatively in the gardens and churches. But it is impossible in Jerusalem to detach oneself from the frightful political problems of Israel.
Ghosts of Hooligans Past

Jan 14, 2025 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Mark Glanville |Akiva Schick |Arun Viswanath |A.E. Smith

“Going to Bristol City next week, Mark?” Spunky asked casually. I told him I couldn’t. “Why’s that? Going on holiday?”“Won’t be around for a while.”“Ah. Going inside?”He’d given me my out. I nodded. “What for?”“Manslaughter.”“Oh. Sorry to hear that mate.