Jewish Review of Books

A quarterly magazine of Jewish criticism, religion, and culture and monthly web-exclusive reviews and essays.

[julia kornberg @sputnikon3]

I wrote a short "stack" for @JRBooks about the secret history of Wu's Wonton King & the Yiddish left https://t.co/exLxuWtZUq

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

"And further, my son, by these words be admonished: of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the flesh!." Read contributing editor's Shai Secunda's take on this controversial verse from Kohelet: https://t.co/OlzB90psiZ

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

“Too often one is not quite sure that one is breathing the same air as that of Maimonides and his great interpreters.”

Yehuda Halper on a new English translation of the Guide of the Perplexed: https://t.co/zCkh2l2VqA

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Maimonides himself complained that his first Hebrew translator was too literal. Eight centuries later, English readers face the same choice: a smooth new translation of the Guide, or Pines’s famously literal one. Yehuda Halper reviews it here: https://t.co/zCkh2l3tg8

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Two new books about anti-Zionism, by Molly Crabapple and Benjamin Moser, struggle with the historical facts around them. From our Fall Issue, read Allan Arkush's "Anti Zionist, A-Historical:" https://t.co/88LNigBjrI

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Two new books about anti-Zionism, by Molly Crabapple and Benjamin Moser, struggle with the historical facts around them. From our Fall Issue, read Allan Arkush's "Anti Zionist, A-Historical:" https://t.co/88LNigBjrI

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Maimonides himself complained that his first Hebrew translator was too literal. Eight centuries later, English readers face the same choice: a smooth new translation of the Guide, or Pines’s famously literal one. Yehuda Halper reviews it here: https://t.co/zCkh2l3tg8

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

“Too often one is not quite sure that one is breathing the same air as that of Maimonides and his great interpreters.”

Yehuda Halper on a new English translation of the Guide of the Perplexed: https://t.co/zCkh2l2VqA

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Does an impressive new translation of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed take away too much of the book’s perplexing nature? Yehuda Halper reviews Goodman and Lieberman: https://t.co/zCkh2l2VqA

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

“I didn’t know any Yiddish expressions, even oy. I had never eaten at a delicatessen. I had never lit Hanukkah candles.”

Nicholas Lemann on growing up Jewish in New Orleans. Jenna Weissman Joselit reviews Returning: https://t.co/VMgLOX9YvA

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

“Identity, Lemann comes to discover, is no mere bequest, static and undemanding, but a process, a negotiation, perhaps even a covenant.”

Jenna Weissman Joselit on Nicholas Lemann’s Returning: https://t.co/VMgLOXawl8

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

“We were insiders who were also outsiders. We led comfortable lives that had very strict limitations.”

Nicholas Lemann on his Jewish family in New Orleans. Jenna Weissman Joselit reviews his new book, Returning: https://t.co/VMgLOXawl8

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

For our Substack, our Founding Editor Abe Socher writes about the slur "Zio," Hebrew commas, and the history of modern Hebrew https://t.co/yRMtJqQMro

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

After the Holocaust, about 1,200 Jewish survivors married Allied soldiers, a figure unknown until Robin Judd’s research. Amy Newman Smith reviews Between Two Worlds, now in paperback: https://t.co/Sp48TFrwok

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Ahead of the Israeli elections, read Shai Secunda's piece on eight very different Israelis and their thoughts about the state of their country: https://t.co/Ei86gVk57K

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

"The lives of Judd’s war brides moved forward under conditions that demanded speed, adaptation, and compromise even as they grieved." Read Amy Newman Smith on Jewish survivors who married Allied soldiers: https://t.co/Sp48TFqYyM

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

After the Holocaust, about 1,200 survivors married Allied soldiers, a figure unknown until Robin Judd’s research. In “Captives of Circumstance,” @amynewsmith reviews Judd’s Between Two Worlds, now out in paperback from @UNC_Press: https://t.co/Sp48TFqYyM

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

For our Substack, read contributing editor Allan Arkush writes about the first Jews to win the Nobel Peace Prize: https://t.co/In6fYrdvVZ

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

Was the early modern period the high point of Jewish women’s communal agency, until our time? Read Avinoam J. Stillman's review of A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: https://t.co/YdFXytn5tW

[Jewish Review of Books @JRBooks]

A Yom Kippur rebuke, a witchcraft rumor in 1732 Hamburg, a fight over burial shrouds in Prague. Avinoam J. Stillman reviews a new history of early modern Jewish women, hiding in plain sight in the community records: https://t.co/iYdCXTAqMm