The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East
For Jews of a certain age, June 5, 1967 is and always will be a date as familiar as one’s own birthday. It was on that day that Israel launched a preemptive strike in response to the mobilization of Egyptian forces along the Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights.
Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War
In 1938, Hank Greenberg came three home runs shy of eclipsing Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers in a season.
Defining Israel: The Jewish State, Democracy, and the Law
Defining Israel: The Jewish State, Democracy, and the Law (HUC Press) is a dense, essential volume for anyone who wants to unpack the maze of documentation and thought at the heart of
A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman's Harrowing Escape from the Nazis
Rabbi James Rudin reviews A Bookshop in Berlin, a story of survival and resilience, of human cruelty and human spirit.
The Mandela Plot
Adolescence, otherness, and Apartheid make a literally explosive cocktail in National Jewish Book Award winner Kenneth Bonert’s new novel, The Mandela Plot. Half hyperbolic adventure and half historical fiction, Bonert elevates his unlikely hero, Martin Helger, to almost mythic status, while reminding readers both of South Africa’s Jewish diaspora and the horrors of Apartheid.
Stories We Tell: The Bird Catcher
Stories We Tell: Get Up and Go Early
Stories We Tell: What it Takes to Get in
The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood
In her book, The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood, author and book critic Donna Rifkind vividly describes the 1930s and 1940s, when 10,000 German-speaking refugees, most of them Jews, found a safe haven from Nazism in Los Angeles.