As World Leaders Gather to Remember the Holocaust, They Should Ask How Anti-Semitism Differs from Ordinary Hatreds
And the dangers to Jews of both radical Islam and intersectionality.
January 22, 2020
Saul Bellow’s Quest for Spirituality in Jerusalem
The novelist’s sole work of nonfiction.
In 1976, the great novelist Saul Bellow wrote his sole book-length nonfiction work, a travelogue called To Jerusalem and Back. Bellow’s account is informed not only by several months in Israel but also by his reading of literary antecedents, including the decidedly anti-Semitic French writer Pierre Loti, who visited Jerusalem in 1894, and the great French conservative Catholic François-René de Chateaubriand, whose 1809 travelogue displays a bit of admiration for Jews mixed in with a great deal of contempt. Considering both Bellow’s work and the works of those who influenced him, Paul Berman writes:
January 22, 2020
The U.S. Finally Acknowledges the Truth about Iran’s Militias
Their relationship with Tehran is anything but murky.
Ultra-Orthodox Control of the Israeli Rabbinate Stands in the Way of Resolving the Conversion Question
Another casualty of the peace process.
That the Torah Gives No Reason for Keeping Kosher Doesn’t Mean It’s Unreasonable
The rationalists’ case for observing kashrut.
Saul Bellow’s Quest for Spirituality in Jerusalem
The novelist’s sole work of nonfiction.