A Fantastical Tale of Modern-Day Khazars, Golems, Jewish Warrior Princesses, and Kabbalistic Sex Changes

June 16 2016

In a historical novel with more than a touch of fantasy, Emily Barton imagines that Khazaria—the Central Asian empire whose rulers, according to legend, converted to Judaism in the 8th century CE—survives into the 20th century and is under attack by the Third Reich. The Book of Esther also features a transsexual warrior princess (the protagonist and title character), mechanical horses, and a village of kabbalists who use their magical powers to create an army of golems who will fight the Nazis. In her review of this “imaginative, engrossing, and entertaining” book, Dara Horn writes:

Barton has talent to spare, and while her pacing and tone are occasionally ponderous, her imagination makes the story as addicting as a Jewish Game of Thrones. The novel’s invented world is considerably more persuasive than the characters populating it, but this hardly gets in the way of the adventure. More distinctively, Barton explores religious culture with remarkable warmth. For those familiar with Judaism, one of the book’s unexpected pleasures is just how unexotic these exotic Khazars turn out to be. (I’ve attended many Sabbath dinners like Esther’s, with fewer golems.)

Yet a load-bearing premise like this one, predicated not merely on the Holocaust but on the real-life absence of golems to stop it, demands more than entertainment. . . . Why this story now? . . .

While Barton’s novel is hardly political, you can’t read it without thinking of the almost supernatural resurrection of anti-Semitism that has taken place in recent years and its attendant indignities—one of which is the reduction of a majestic civilization to a degrading public posture of self-defense. The un-cynical purity with which Barton imagines her Jewish kingdom is like a literary Sabbath for those weary of today’s jihadists and Internet trolls. At the book’s ambiguous end, it’s reassuring to remember that in reality this civilization still thrives.

Read more at New York Times

More about: Arts & Cultural, Golem, Khazars, Literature, World War II

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023