History & Ideas
The author of the recent Mosaic essay drops by to draw a picture of a now-vanished world of flamethrowers, washed-up ideologues, and true believers.
Ben Hecht invented the gangster movie. He also prodded Roosevelt into saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis, and marshaled reluctant American Jews into becoming Zionists.
I am fortunate to have witnessed, and been offered, not only real madness but also real, and not delusional, goodness.
Variations of Hebrew’s misken, meaning “poor” or “unfortunate,” can be found from Italian to Swahili to Tagalog and far beyond.
Airing the complicity of some American Jews with Soviet criminality is essential to the honor and the reputation of the Jewish people.
An exhibit at the Jewish Museum London showcases the old, vicious stereotype with the aim of debunking it. But does it succeed?
But notoriously some, like Morton Sobell, were both. For the Jewish community, their highly visible profile was a constant source of tension and embarrassment.
What you notice when returning to your native country after many years away: everyone starts sentences with “So” and ends them with a question mark.
With the recent death of the unrepentant spy, his story, along with that of other American Jews steeped in Communism, can finally be told.
At arguably the moment of Harvard’s greatest involvement with Jews and Judaism, new movements in (anti-)intellectual thought started to creep in, too.
Before becoming linked to the famous architect who was trying to escape it, the German word mies (rotten) made its way from Hebrew, to Yiddish, to a thieves’ argot called Rotwelsch.
At each point—1897, 1917, and 1947—one Jewish leader appeared, and showed greatness.
From academia to philanthropy to journalism, my experience with Jewish leadership has been by turns discouraging and inspiring.
How something as simple as a brief moment of reflection for schoolchildren could influence hearts and minds for the better.
