The Secret Chord
It's a good bet that many Americans are doing some deep thinking about the qualities we seek in a leader. Do we value charisma over moral purity? Do we forgive personal flaws in deference to rank and power?
We Were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz
The word “kibbutz” may suggest a healthy, outdoorsy lifestyle on a self-sustaining farm, a cooperative of hardy, dedicated men and women, living and working together, sharing their lives. Yael Neeman’s memoir, We Were the Future details a surprisingly different scenario.
L’Chaim: Pictures to Evoke Memories of a Jewish Life
The book is large and fits comfortably on a lap. The color photographs nearly fill each page. Each image depicts real people doing everyday Jewish things — a young girl eating matzah ball soup; a bubbe and her grandchildren lying in the grass; a man wearing tefillin, praying. The sentences are in large print; they are simple ("Mother says the blessing over the candles") and easy to read.
Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman
There is a photograph in my study of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with me in a crowded Jerusalem hotel ballroom.
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.
Joseph: Mensch or Menace?
With this week’s Torah portion, we enter the final four (Torah portions, that is) of the Book of Genesis.
Tamar’s Staff, Signet Seal, and Cord
This portion can be read as the first of the Joseph stories or the culmination of the sibling rivalry that has plagued the families of Genesis.
Judah: Our Overlooked Patriarch
Among the prominent themes of the Book of Genesis are sibling rivalry, the supplanting of the firstborn by a younger brother, and difficult family dynamics in general. The pattern is repeated with Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, and Esau and Jacob.
From the Coat of Many Colors to a Simple Garment: The Unmaking of Joseph
It is said that clothes make the man. But in this week's portion, Vayeishev, they have a great deal to do with the unmaking of Joseph.
She Died unto Me
Four years after my grandfather died, my grandmother remarried. She changed her last name from Dunsker to Hyman, and two months later her second husband died of a heart attack. But she kept the last name Hyman for the rest of her life until she died fifteen years later.