JL;DR

The book "Tanais" by Iossif Ventouras tells the story of the sinking of the Tanais ship during World War II, carrying Jewish prisoners bound for Auschwitz, i...

"The Natural" by Bernard Malamud is a novel about a baseball player named Roy Hobbs who overcomes adversity to make it to the major leagues. The story explor...

"The Recruiter" by Douglas London is a rare book that captures the essence of intelligence work while remaining interesting. London, a Jew who spent three de...

Elisheva Baumgarten's book "Biblical Women and Jewish Daily Life in the Middle Ages" explores the religious practices of medieval Ashkenaz, focusing on the e...

In "Are We all Kahanists Now?", Shaul Magid discusses Meir Kahane, a controversial figure in American Jewry and Israel. Despite many historians and scholars ...

In her book God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion's Surprising Impact on Academic Success, Ilana M. Horwitz argues that religious teens have an advantage in ...

"Wandering Jews" is an edited volume that explores Jewish travel writing from biblical times to the present day. The book examines the significance and direc...

"Aerograms Across the Ocean" is a personal memoir that tells the story of the evolving friendship and love between Rachel Korati and David Biale through thei...

Lawrence M. Wills' book "Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles" challenges the common categorization of the Apocrypha as non-canoni...

In "Hardware, Software, or Love?", Menachem Kellner explores the concept of chosenness in Judaism and the relationship between truth claims of Judaism and ot...

In "Wishful Republic," Omri Boehm presents Haifa as a model for a binational federation in Israel that incorporates both Jews and Palestinians. Boehm argues ...

The Letters section of the magazine discusses various topics related to Jewish culture and history. One letter criticizes a review of a biography of Sydney T...

"Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai" by Matti Friedman is a book that explores Leonard Cohen's singing tour during the Yom Kippur War in Israel in 1973....

Alex Singer, a lone soldier, was an American Jew who enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and served as a paratrooper from 1985 to 1987. This book, "A...

In his book "The Nazi Rosetta Stone," Peter Longerich examines the Wannsee Conference, a meeting held in November 1941 where high-ranking German officials ga...

This text describes the author's experience helping Ukrainian refugees in Moldova, specifically those fleeing the Russian invasion. The author encounters var...

The book "Graven Images" explores the drawings and sketches of the famous writer Franz Kafka, which were previously overlooked and undiscovered. The book rev...

"The Treason of the Intellectuals" by Julien Benda is a book that discusses the moral obligations and failures of intellectuals. Benda argues that intellectu...

The article discusses the controversial issue of the Yemenite Children Affair in Israel during the 1950s. It begins by recounting the story of Varda Fuchs, w...

"Memories of Morocco", edited by Joseph Chetrit, Jane S. Gerber, and Drora Arussy, explores the Jewish experience in Morocco. The book highlights the complex...

In "Days of Redemption" by Arieh Saposnik, the author explores the concept of redemption in Zionist thought. While traditional Judaism initially denounced Zi...

"The Books of Jacob" by Olga Tokarczuk is a massive novel about Jacob Frank and his followers, a heretical movement in the 18th century. Frank was born in Po...

In Andrew Lawler's book "Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested City," he explores the history of archaeological expeditions in Je...

This text is a personal reflection on the author's discovery of their eighteenth-century great-grandmother, Leah Horowitz, who was a scholar and writer of wo...

"Shababnikim" is an Israeli sitcom that follows the lives of four yeshiva students as they navigate contemporary Israel. The show explores the experiences of...

The book "Storytelling, or: Yiddish in America" explores the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the best-known Yiddish writer of the 20th century. The author ini...

The Jewish Review of Books (JRB) is celebrating its thirteenth year and marking an important turning point as it transitions to become a wholly independent n...

During World War II, North Africa was under the rule of the Vichy French, Italian fascists, and Nazis, leading to widespread suffering for the local populati...

The article discusses the debate around the separation of church and state in the United States and its implications for religious education. It highlights t...

The essay discusses the case of Carson v. Makin, which raises questions about religious freedom and the First Amendment. The central issue is whether Maine's...

In 2002, Nathan Kamenetsky self-published his controversial book "Making of a Godol: A Study of Episodes in the Lives of Great Torah Personalities." The book...

The Passover Seder has evolved over time, with different Jewish communities leaving their mark on the ritual. The Seder as we know it today was influenced by...

This article discusses the connection between poet-singer Leonard Cohen and Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal. Cohen's grandfather, Lyon Cohen, was a...

The author explores the history of American Jews and their involvement in the alcohol industry. The Rheingold Corporation, a Jewish-owned company, became pop...

The book "Wild Things: The New Neo-Hasidism and Modern Orthodoxy" edited by Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse explores the emergence of a new religious ident...

The author shares their personal experience of going into debt during the 2008 financial crisis and being unable to repay it. They draw a parallel to the bib...

"Hasidism, Jung, and the Jewish Spiritual Crisis" explores the relationship between Jungian psychology and Hasidic teachings in the context of the Jewish spi...

"This Shall Not Be in Vain" is a memoir by Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, a pacifist who became a Navy chaplain during World War II. The memoir, published posth...

"The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France" by James McAuley is a study of four interconnected French museums, once owned by ...

Judah Philip Benjamin was the first American Jew to serve in a president's cabinet. Born into a Sephardi family in Saint Croix, Benjamin grew up in Charlesto...

In the book "From the Shtiebel to the Hora" by David Assaf, the author explores the origins of Israeli songs and their connection to Jewish heritage. Many Is...

David Grossman's novel, More Than I Love My Life, tells the story of Eva and Rade, two heroes of World War II who later became victims of political persecuti...

"A Play for the End of the World" by Jai Chakrabarti is a novel that tells the story of a fictional survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto orphanage who travels to ru...

This article discusses the significance of the All-of-a-Kind Family children's book series by Sydney Taylor. Published in the 1950s, it was the first mass-ma...

This text discusses the creation of the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls, Canada by the author's family. The author's family, who were entrepren...

In "Bastard, Orphan . . . Jew?", Andrew Porwancher's book on Alexander Hamilton's Jewish identity is discussed. The article acknowledges the inconclusive evi...

The article explores different interpretations of Jonah's prayer from the depths in the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. It discusses how literary mode...

The article explores the similarities between the biblical book of Ecclesiastes and Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Both texts share themes of futility, existenti...

"Jews Don't Count" by David Baddiel explores the issue of contemporary antisemitism and the tendency of progressives to dismiss or downplay it. Baddiel discu...

This article discusses the cultural life in the Vilna Ghetto during the German occupation from 1941 to 1943. It focuses on the experiences of Yiddish poet Ab...