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Isaac Babel's Guide to Life and Death
December  

Isaac Babel’s Guide to Life and Death

The great Russian Jewish writer was caught between revolution and daily life, Bolsheviks and Jews, a desire to kill and an inability to pull the trigger. Did he ever choose?

How Israel’s Declaration of Independence Became Its Constitution
November  

How Israel’s Declaration of Independence Became Its Constitution

Israel’s founders made little of the declaration at the time. It took decades of work by figures of widely different political stripes to make it the towering document it is today.

The Eternal Return of Ethel Rosenberg
October  

The Eternal Return of Ethel Rosenberg

A much-loved new biography argues that the convicted Soviet spy “betrayed no one.” How has the myth of her innocence become so untethered from the evidence of her guilt?

September 11 from 1981 to 2031
September  A Story of Six Septembers

September 11 from 1981 to 2031

America has been learning and forgetting the lessons of 2001 for decades. It’s now in the midst of forgetting them again. Will the same result follow?

The Jabotinsky Paradox
August  

The Jabotinsky Paradox

How could the man who at one point openly scorned religion also be the forefather of the political coalition that ensured for it a key place in Israeli life?

The Present, Past, and Pre-History of Conversion
May  The Great Awakenings

The Present, Past, and Pre-History of Conversion

Longing to leave liberalism behind, everyone from Catholics to Communists is experimenting with self-transformation. What’s fueling that desire, and is it strong enough to make the break?

Skokie Then and Now
April  Free Speech and the Jews

Skokie Then and Now

In 1977, a Jewish director of the ACLU famously agreed to defend the rights of neo-Nazis in Illinois to demonstrate in public. Would the same thing happen today—and should it?

The Return of the Peace Processors
February  The Dark Side of Daylight

The Return of the Peace Processors

For decades, America’s foreign-policy establishment has, in the name of peace, incentivized conflict in the Middle East. Now that it’s back in power, can it learn from its mistakes?

The Mystery of Theodor Herzl
January  

The Mystery of Theodor Herzl

A young secular Viennese writer had an experience 125 years ago that would lead him to change Jewish history forever. He could never explain it. Can anyone else?

My Quarrel with "My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner"
December  The Debate at the Center of Jewish Modernity

My Quarrel with “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner”

How I came to translate one of the greatest stories in all of Yiddish literature, a work that I believe uniquely illuminates the debate at the very center of Jewish modernity.

Israel’s Russian Wave, Thirty Years Later
November  Israel's Eastern Bloc

Israel’s Russian Wave, Thirty Years Later

Three decades ago, a million emigres from Eastern Europe arrived in Israel, increasing its population by 20 percent almost overnight and changing its culture forever. What’s their story?