Tikvah

Gary Saul Morson


Gary Saul Morson is the Lawrence B. Dumas professor of the arts and humanities at Northwestern University and the author of, among other books, Anna Karenina in Our Time (Yale).

Latest Content

  1. Response ·

    Watch Gary Saul Morson and Jacob Howland Discuss the Dostoevsky Problem

    By Gary Saul Morson, Jacob Howland, Jonathan Silver

    Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

    Watch Gary Saul Morson and Jacob Howland Discuss the Dostoevsky Problem
  2. Response ·

    The Jews Who Guard Dostoevsky

    By Gary Saul Morson

    Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

    The Jews Who Guard Dostoevsky
  3. Monthly Essay ·

    Why Dostoevsky Loved Humanity and Hated the Jews

    By Gary Saul Morson

    The case of the literary master helps explain why people who devote themselves to compassion for all so often make an exception for Jews.

    Why Dostoevsky Loved Humanity and Hated the Jews
  4. Observation ·

    How the Jews of Russia Were Made Into the Jews of the Soviet Union

    By Gary Saul Morson

    Jews were expected to transform their shtetl values, religious traditions, and bourgeois attitudes into muscular exemplars of humanity’s ideal, the New Soviet Man.

    How the Jews of Russia Were Made Into the Jews of the Soviet Union
  5. Observation ·

    Isaac Babel’s Odessa Tricksters

    By Gary Saul Morson

    The great Jewish writer evoked a city—now under threat from Russia's armies—with a character of its own that has entered into folklore, literature, and the popular imagination.

    Isaac Babel’s Odessa Tricksters
  6. Response ·

    Watch Mosaic’s Dramatic Reading of Isaac Babel’s “Red Cavalry”

    By Jonathan Silver, Gary Saul Morson, Natan Sharansky

    Committed to developing and supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

    Watch Mosaic’s Dramatic Reading of Isaac Babel’s “Red Cavalry”
  7. Monthly Essay ·

    Isaac Babel’s Guide to Life and Death

    By Gary Saul Morson

    The great Russian Jewish writer was caught between revolution and daily life, Bolsheviks and Jews, a desire to kill and an inability to pull the trigger. Did he ever choose?

    Isaac Babel’s Guide to Life and Death
  8. Observation ·

    Hunger Dreams in the USSR

    By Gary Saul Morson

    A newly translated memoir of the gulag should (but probably won't) remind those who still flirt with Communism what exactly they're endorsing.

    Hunger Dreams in the USSR
  9. Observation ·

    The Best Books of 2020, Chosen by Mosaic Authors (Part III)

    By Gary Saul Morson, Yehoshua Pfeffer, Daniel Polisar, Neil Rogachevsky, Michael Weingrad

    Five more of our regular writers pick several favorites each, featuring Stalingrad, the master, Margarita, parasitic minds, infectious ideas, dust, heaven, Zoom, traveling light, and more.

    The Best Books of 2020, Chosen by Mosaic Authors (Part III)
  10. Observation ·

    The Trouble at Northwestern

    By Gary Saul Morson

    I just wrote a book about new fundamentalisms with the university's much-loved Jewish president. Now one of those fundamentalisms, aided by its Jewish exponents, is coming for him.

    The Trouble at Northwestern
  11. Observation ·

    In Russia, Anti-Semitism Has Long Been the Opiate of the Intellectuals

    By Gary Saul Morson

    Even though the author tries to downplay it, a new book shows how deeply rooted anti-Semitism was in Soviet ideology.

    In Russia, Anti-Semitism Has Long Been the Opiate of the Intellectuals
  12. Observation ·

    Two Russian-Jewish Women of Distinction, and Their Distinctive Diaries

    By Gary Saul Morson

    The women's self-recorded experiences are utterly disparate, but both offer a potent antidote to any sentimental nostalgia for life in the age of Sholom Aleichem.

    Two Russian-Jewish Women of Distinction, and Their Distinctive Diaries