Our Fall issue is now online!

Our Fall issue is now out in the world! Stay tuned for our online launch, next week.

My recent romp through the history of the Jewish cult of saints, is out with @jewishreviewbooks.bsky.social jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo... Visiting the Graves of the Righteous: Inns of Molten Blue - Jewish Review of Books

Happy to announce the Spring issue, timely Passover- and other-wise, with discussion of war in Gaza and dissent against oppressive government, while also keeping our heads in the clouds, or at least in poetry about the strange air above a librarian’s ladder. jewishreviewofbooks.com/issue/spring...

What a cover!!!

David and Benji are a classic odd couple, a little bit like Steve Martin and John Candy in 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles', except this time the trains are Polish and the characters are Jewish, which admittedly gives it all a different valence. Emil Stern's riotous review in our latest issue.

After seeing A Real Pain, I felt disappointed. This line resonates with me: "And this is the film’s real problem: It does not, or cannot, confront the actual, tortured history of Jews in Poland or the issue of Polish complicity in the Holocaust."

Winter issue just dropped, with a book review by Adam Kirsch, movie review by Emil Stern, an essay by Malka Simkovitch, a necrology by Ben Balint, soccer hooligan memories by Mark Glanville, and much much more! jewishreviewofbooks.com/issue/winter...

jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-life/... Reviel Netz on the remarkable story of the Chabad menorah and its critical meaning, from Roman imperial art to medieval diagrams in Maimonides, his son Abraham, the Yemenite scholar R’ Kapah, Israeli critics, and abstract expressionists, too. A wild journey.

We just put our winter issue to bed and the writing really sparkles. This one has quite a cast of character, ranging from French Jewish radicals to soccer hooligans to a persnickety book reviewer (no, not one who's written for JRB). Now's the time to subscribe! www.ezsubscription.com/jrb/subscribe

In spending a life pondering why talmudic arguments often turned on unlikely interpretations, Halivni was not merely asking what motivated talmudic passages; he was trying to explain the literary character of the bedrock text of rabbinic Judaism, and his life. jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo...

“I want to be your wife,” she tells the alarmed Dustin. “To stuff you with Thanksgiving turkey.” A review of Galit Dahan Carlibach’s wicked novel, “Zot ani, Iowa (It’s Me, Iowa)”, and Maya Arad’s “The Hebrew Teacher” jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/343...

An almost decade-old review of "Pumpkinflowers," Matti Friedman's micro-history and memoir about an otherwise unremarkable site in the history of Israeli military adventures in Lebanon. jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/227...

Maybe Israelis are widely anathematized because they are perceived as evil, colonizing Europeans. Or perhaps it's their ambiguous position as not quite settlers, not quite indigenous—hence a sense of the uncanny—which leads to anti-Israeli hatred and disgust? jewishreviewofbooks.com/american-jew...

When Bellow met Agnon in Jerusalem, "[Agnon] asked me if any of my books had been translated into Hebrew. If they had not been, I had better see to it immediately, because, he said, they would survive only in the Holy Tongue." They were speaking in Yiddish. jewishreviewofbooks.com/american-jew...

Did Bendahan write a modernist novel, an ethnographic portrait of Tetouani Sephardi life, or maybe, a brilliant and ambivalent piece of feminist fiction repurposing the old (antisemitic and antifeminist) trope of the beautiful Jewess? J Kornberg on "Mazaltob" jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo...

Sit in on a meeting of the board of any Jewish organization or watch the Knesset Channel...and you will find ample confirmation that Jewish politics is messy. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Prof. Elisheva Carlebach on the Jewish Political Tradition. jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/601...

Today is the Yahrzeit of the late Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Rabbi Sacks reviewed in our pages the English literary theorist, Terry Eagleton's, 2016 book, "Culture and the Death of God." jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/100...

The London crowd was delighted to hear that the young poet would be reading an ode to T. S. Eliot; then, as if on cue, the great man entered the hall. “Eminence becomes you,” began Litvinoff. But then, oh dear . . . Jack Omer-Jackaman in the Fall issue. jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-histo...

Ayn Rand imagined that her romantic prose soared. In truth, not only did her anti-communist prose barely schlepp along, it mirrored Soviet Socialist Realism. Read GS Morson's review of A Popoff, "Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success" in our Fall issue. jewishreviewofbooks.com/literature/1...

Your favorite magazine of serious, accessible, and sometimes playful writing on Jewish culture and scholarship is now on Bluesky! Follow us for our smart criticism, inimitable style, abiding curiosity, and uncompromising commitment to Jewish intellectual life.