Jewish Review of Books

21/10/2025

"I know a lot of people who like to read, but none of them likes to read as much as Ilana Kurshan. She reads while cooking dinner and she reads while eating dinner, she reads for work and she reads for pleasure, and she reads while walking down the street (usually to the library for more reading). When she had children, naturally, she just started reading out loud.

Like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who cures all with Windex, Kurshan cures all with reading."

Ilana Kurshan's reading cure.

09/10/2025

The tradition to stay up all night studying on Shavuot is far more well-known than the tradition to do so on Hoshana Rabbah. Neither would have been possible without Kabbalah and caffeine.

The tradition to stay up all night studying on Shavuot is far more well-known than the tradition to do so on Hoshana Rabbah. Neither would have been possible without Kabbalah and caffeine.

06/10/2025

Fifteen falls ago, I spent a night sleeping on the ground of Union Square Park, inside a hut cloaked in hundreds of hand-scrawled cardboard pleas. “Help if you can. God Bless.” “Disabled Vet. Need Help. Please.” “Broke & Hungry. Anything Helps.” “Gas? Anything?”

It was the opening night of Sukkah City, the design contest I organized with Roger Bennett, who had cofounded the Jewish arts collective Reboot. We’d invited the world’s leading architects to reimagine one of the world’s oldest structures. Twelve winning firms each received $10,000 to construct their “radically temporary” kosher pavilions in the middle of one of New York City’s most trafficked parks. The Parks Department required at least one member of our team to be on site around the clock. I drew the short straw for the first night.

Remembering Sukkah City

01/10/2025

"The other day YouTube decided that I ought to watch a strangely mesmerizing psychologist from Canada named Jordan B. Peterson berate me over my failure to follow his 10 rules for success. His first rule was to “stop doing the things that you know are wrong,” when you know that they are wrong.

This is a good, straightforward rule. It’s also a pretty easy one to follow, if you are a robot or an angel. I don’t think that Dr. Peterson mentioned that it was Aristotle who first tried to seriously work through the question of how it is that we frequently seem to do things that we know to be against our better judgment. Socrates had said that, although a person may be wrong about what is good for him, “No one goes willingly toward the bad,” which seems obviously true until one remembers that, in fact, one does so fairly often. After all, I ought to have tied myself to the mast of Microsoft Word and resisted the siren call of YouTube whose window I had ostensibly opened in order to . . . well, I am not quite sure what I opened it for anymore, but there must have been a good reason, and it had nothing to do with Jordan B. Peterson or ad words or Google’s super-secret distractibility algorithm for middle-aged men. (I’ve been wondering if this Yom Kippur I should add a line to the Al Chet litany of confession: “And for the sin of opening browser windows of distraction,” though perhaps someone has already done it . . . how would I Google that?)"
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2728/is-repentance-possible/

30/09/2025

"I read Hostage in two intense sittings—and would have done it in one, if my teenage daughter had not picked up the book and became mesmerized when I had to take a short break. The Book Publishers Association of Israel recently announced that Hostage was the fastest-selling book in the history of Hebrew literature, selling twenty thousand copies in just five days. (When I went to buy a copy from my local Israeli bookstore, it was in a diminishing pile at the checkout counter rather than with the other new books.) Hostage has now been published in English, and more translations are in the works."

Eli Sharabi's memoir takes readers down into the dark tunnels of his captivity.

29/09/2025

Rampaging robots, Sukkahs made of glass, and the worst Shabbos dinner ever. The latest JRB is here!

Monuments and Mosaics: 
The Ancient Synagogues of the Galilee Yitz Landes Mosaics, elephants, and the problem of archeology.

26/09/2025

"Like many people I know, I now have a surplus of favorite podcasts. If I tried to keep up with all of them, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else. But even if you have the same problem, I recommend documentarian David Modigliani’s Pack One Bag. It’s the story of his extended Italian Jewish family’s life under Italian Fascist rule, their last-minute escape, and the long aftermath in the United States, where his grandfather, MIT economist Franco Modigliani, ultimately won the Nobel Prize. It’s a must-listen."

An escape from Fascist Italy, one bag at a time.

29/07/2025

One of my favorite Jewish jokes is about Chaim and Mendel, who meet in a displaced persons camp after World War II. They become best friends, but when Chaim receives permission to immigrate to the United States and Mendel gets papers for Britain, they have to part. After two years, Chaim decides to go to England to visit his friend. As he steps off the ocean liner, he sees Mendel waiting for him in the crowd, now clean-shaven and wearing a beautiful Savile Row suit, weeping loudly. “Mendel,” Chaim says, “I thought you’d be happy to see me. What’s the matter?” “Haven’t you heard?” Mendel replies. “We lost India!”

—Adam Kirsch

Rachel Cockerell didn't write a word of her inventive memoir. The past did.

22/07/2025

On my way to Cynthia Ozick’s house in New Rochelle in the back of an Uber, I began to worry about whether I knew how to properly dip a madeleine in tea. Had I ever even eaten a madeleine? Did those cellophaned three-packs of tasteless shell-shaped sponges at the Starbucks register count? In preparation for our meeting, I’d read Giles Harvey’s 2016 profile in The New York Times Magazine, in which Ozick complimented him on his cookie-dipping technique: “‘You’re doing exactly the right thing!’ she said. ‘Just what Proust did!’” But how had Proust done it when he evoked those childhood memories? And which end of the cookie had Harvey broken off so impeccably?

—Read Abraham Socher's full interview with Cynthia Ozick.

"I can’t and won’t reread: What’s done is done. Print is writing’s final fate."

15/07/2025

Don't miss the latest issue of JRB! We've got Jewish riots, haunted houses, and Cynthia Ozick's Old Country chic.

Story Evades Cogitation: An Interview with Cynthia Ozick Abraham Socher "I can’t and won’t reread: What’s done is done. Print is writing’s final fate."