Enough Already With Koufax
At first glance, the appeal of an essay collection titled Jewish Jocks might seem limited to a small, if fervent, readership. In fact, the anthology, edited by former Tablet writer Marc Tracy and New...
View ArticleMy Hip-Hop Nation
Some people say the way to measure the health of a society is by the status of its women. Others look to the GDP, or to voter turnout. For Tablet’s Liel Liebovitz, it’s a question of beats, rhymes, and...
View ArticleCello Genius on the Move
It is hard to overstate 30-year-old cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s musical achievements. In 2011, she was named a MacArthur fellow, aka “genius,” for her accomplishments as a musician and as an “advocate...
View ArticleSoccer as a Wartime Prism
Growing up in the Netherlands, Simon Kuper was raised on soccer and on stories of the Dutch resistance during World War II. It was only as an adult that Kuper, a columnist for the Financial Times,...
View ArticleOld McYankel Had a Farm
Last summer, 18people paid anywhere between $2,000 and $4,000 to plant cucumbers, scrub potatoes, and build a chicken coop on 200 acres in Goshen, N.Y., all while speaking in a language few of them...
View ArticleThe Jews Write Christmas Again
That Jews wrote many of the most beloved Christmas songs in the holiday songbook is no secret. “White Christmas,” by Irving Berlin, is perhaps the best-known example, but there are countless others,...
View ArticleJoel Meyerowitz Looks Back
Joel Meyerowitz has had many careers as a photographer over the past 50 years. He first made a name for himself at 24 as a New York City street photographer in the tradition of Robert Frank. A few...
View ArticleRock ’n’ Remembrance
Lily Brett didn’t care much for rock ’n’ roll, but her job was with a rock magazine, so, reluctantly, she hung out with Mick Jagger. And Jimi Hendrix. And the Who and Cat Stevens and Jim Morrison and...
View ArticleThe Search for a Black Zion
About a decade ago, novelist Emily Raboteau went to Jerusalem to visit a childhood friend who’d made aliyah. The trip provoked yearnings in Raboteau, the biracial daughter of an African-American father...
View ArticlePantsless in Jerusalem
When reporter Daniel Estrin first heard through the grapevine that Jerusalemites were planning on participating in the international 12th annual No Pants Subway Ride, he thought: This cannot go well....
View ArticleThe Settlers’ Spiritual Fathers
Israeli voters go to the polls today to elect the next Knesset. Regardless of the outcome, undoubtedly the biggest story of the campaign season has been the rise of Naftali Bennett, a rookie politician...
View ArticleThe Afterlife of a Russian Bard
Vladimir Vysotsky, Russia’s beloved balladeer, would have turned 75 this week. Though he died more than three decades ago, at the age of 42, he is still revered as a singer and poet who captured the...
View ArticleHow To Sell Judaism
If you’ve spent any time on the streets or subways of New York City in the past decade, you’ve probably encountered the ads for Manhattan Mini Storage. The company is famous for its no-holds-barred...
View ArticleHow (Not) To Stop a Bully
When a bullying incident makes the news, a flurry of collective hand-wringing generally follows. We call for schools to be stricter, punishment to be harsher, kids to be kinder. But what have we...
View ArticleA Very Modern Purimspiel
A central component of Purim observance is, of course, the raucous, collective reading of the Book of Esther. That tradition has evolved into a virtual industry of theatrical storytelling events, or...
View ArticleThe Nine Lives of ‘Hava Nagila’
“Hava Nagila” is perhaps the best-known Jewish song in the United States. Jewish and non-Jewish wedding and bar/bat mitzvah attendees alike know that its first few notes are our cue to link arms on the...
View ArticleAn Unwed Woman of Valor
When Mereleh Luft arrived in New York as a teenager in 1914, she had big plans: to meet a man and start a Jewish family, and to earn enough money to bring the rest of her family over from Latvia. By...
View ArticleOur Jesus
Twenty years ago, while studying Hebrew and Latin in high school, London writer Naomi Alderman found herself fascinated by the conflicting and overlapping Jewish and Christian accounts she was reading...
View ArticleObsessed With Hollywood
Rachel Shukert is well known to Tablet followers as our pop culture expert, writing her Tattler column about everything from reality TV to the British royal family. She even wrote and performed an...
View ArticleClose Encounters With Talmud
As an author and literary critic (including for Tablet), Adam Kirsch has written about Lionel Trilling, Benjamin Disraeli, Emily Dickinson, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, among many others. This past...
View ArticleThe Search for an Ancient Blue
In the Book of Numbers, it is written that God said to Moses: “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their...
View ArticleWhy Do We Want Revenge?
In the wake of horrific crimes, there is a mantra from politicians, lawyers, and victims: They don’t want revenge, they say; they just want justice. Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist, essayist, and professor...
View ArticleInside the Ringelblum Archive
To read more Tablet in Warsaw coverage, click here. This week, Tablet is reporting from Warsaw, which is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The new Museum of the History...
View ArticleCurse of the Survivor
In 1930s Warsaw, a young beauty named Vera Gran made a name for herself as a seductive and charming cabaret singer with a voice fans likened to Edith Piaf’s and Marlene Dietrich’s. Gran (born Grynberg)...
View ArticleIn Praise of Dairy Restaurants
B&H Restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village was once part of a neighborhood that vibrated with Jewishness. Yiddish theaters peppered the area. Ratner’s was down the street, and the 2nd Avenue Deli...
View ArticleWhen Berlin Meant Business
Berlin has long had an anti-capitalist bent, part of its countercultural charm. But before the war, it was a more enterprising and bustling place, due in no small part to the nearly 50,000 Jewish-owned...
View ArticleExamining Life After a Crash
Joshua Prager is a reporter best known for tracking down elusive characters whose lives were altered in an instant—people like Tehran-based photographer Jahangir Razmi, the only anonymous winner of a...
View ArticleA New Novel Brings Ghosts, Geeks, and Golems to Sleepover Camp
In his debut novel, The Path of Names, Vancouver-based writer Ari Goelman conjures Dahlia, an intrepid 13-year-old who we meet as she begrudgingly attends her first summer at Camp Arava, the Jewish...
View ArticleJewish Comedy Has Earned Big Praise, But Is It Time to Stop the Joke-Telling?
What are the three words a woman never wants to hear when she’s making love? Honey, I’m home. Whether their circumstances are happy or fraught, Jews have been pointing out the humor in their...
View ArticleIn an Ex-Pat’s Literary Crime Novel, Norwegian and Jewish-American...
Sheldon Horowitz is a retired watch repairman and wise-cracker from New York City and a Korean War veteran relocated to Oslo, where he lives with his granddaughter and her Norwegian husband. In...
View ArticleWhat Spinoza Knew and Neuroscience Is Discovering: ‘Free Will’ Doesn’t Exist
Questions of character shape public discourse. From Paula Deen to Edward Snowden—the choices people make and actions people take raise questions about free will, personal responsibility, and morality....
View ArticleThe Dreyfus Affair Holds a Sacred Place in French History. Is There Room for...
Nearly 120 years after the Dreyfus Affair shook the world, you would think we know all there is to know about the seminal case involving a French Jewish officer falsely accused of treason. Alfred...
View ArticleThe Children of Refuseniks Report From the Frontlines of Putin’s Russia
Yesterday’s sentencing of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was just the latest in a steady stream of blows to the democracy that President Vladimir Putin has ruled with...
View ArticleIn ‘The Store,’ the Arrival of a Second-Hand Shop Unhinges an Israeli Village
David Ehrlich is best known as the founder of Tmol Shilshom, a bookstore café in the heart of Jerusalem that has long been a popular gathering place for writers and artists. It’s named after the novel...
View ArticleA Hasidic Alt-Rock Girl Band Gets Its Groove On—In Crown Heights
In 2011, adventure-seeking rock drummer-turned-Hasidic mother of four Dalia Shusterman became a widow. At about the same time, Perl Wolfe, born and raised in the Lubavitch sect of Hasidism, married and...
View ArticleDrinking in Jerusalem: A Love Story. No, a Tragedy. No, an Adventure.
The dog days of August are upon us and with them, a marked slowdown in productivity. Nobody answers our calls, hardly anyone responds to emails, and those of us in the office find ourselves fantasizing...
View ArticleA New Era of Anti-Semitism Is Here. Daniel Goldhagen Blames Globalization.
In 1996, Daniel Goldhagen unleashed a fury of controversy when he published the book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, in which he argued that the Holocaust took place not because Germans were especially...
View ArticleAncient Roman Jews Meet Wartime Partisans on a Raucous and Lush Avant-rock Album
When guitarist and composer Dan Kaufman headed to Rome in 2009 to study the liturgical melodies of the city’s ancient Jewish community, he stumbled upon the site of a famous partisan attack against the...
View ArticleHelène Aylon’s Journey From Rebbetzin to Internationally Acclaimed Feminist...
Helène Aylon grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in a tight-knit world of Orthodox families. From early on, she was a bit of a rebel, but that didn’t stop her from following the path prescribed for her....
View ArticleAlan Berliner’s Newest Cinematic Poem Reflects on a Relative With Alzheimer’s
For nearly 30 years, the filmmaker Alan Berliner has made uniquely personal documentaries that mine his life and the lives of his relatives, chipping away at seemingly routine stories to find a more...
View ArticleAmos Oz Still Dreams of Life on the Kibbutz
Amos Oz died December 28 at age 79. Here’s his 2013 Vox Tablet interview with Daniel Estrin. You can listen to it or read the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT The post Amos Oz Still Dreams of Life on the...
View ArticleSeeing the Strengths and Pitfalls of a Whole Country in the Lives of Seven...
In June of 1967, the world watched with disbelief as the young Israeli army turned a perilous threat—enemy troops gathering at its borders—into a tremendous military victory. The symbol of that...
View ArticleFrom Teen Chronicler of Yiddish Curses to Global Fame: Sholem Aleichem’s...
When people hear the name Sholem Aleichem, they very often think of Tevye the Dairyman and his Broadway showstoppers. It’s true, Sholem Aleichem wrote the stories on which Fiddler on the Roof is based,...
View ArticlePainting a Portrait of a Political, Literary and Journalistic Powerhouse
For most of its first 50-plus years, the Yiddish language Jewish Daily Forward (now 116 years old) was edited by its founder, Abraham Cahan. Cahan was a Lithuanian immigrant and socialist who came to...
View ArticleThe Show That Made the World Fall in Love With the Jews and Grow Nostalgic...
It’s fairly common nowadays to hear renditions of “Sunrise, Sunset,” for instance, or “The Sabbath Prayer,” memorable melodies from the Fiddler on the Roof, at bar mitzvahs or weddings. Songs from that...
View ArticleFyvush Finkel: A Charming Conversation With a Longtime Serious Mensch
Editor’s note: Fyvush Finkel died on August 14, 2016, at the age of 93. This interview was recorded in 2010. Fyvush Finkel, 91 years old and still cracking wise, will take to the stage this month in a...
View ArticleHow an Alabama Doctor Became a Rabbi to His Patients at a Groundbreaking AIDS...
Back in the early 1980s, two populations found their lives upended by the AIDS epidemic in America. There were, of course, those infected by the virus, along with everyone who cared for them. And then...
View ArticleAnd Now for Something Completely Different
First there was Vox Tablet. Then there was Israel Story. Now, we are excited to present Unorthodox, Tablet’s newest podcast and part of Slate’s Panoply network. Hosted by Tablet Editor-at-Large Mark...
View ArticleMy Grandfather, the Secret Policeman
Poet and writer Rita Gabis grew up surrounded by grandparents with accents—Russian, Yiddish, Lithuanian. That makes it sound like a familiar Jewish immigrant tale, but it was far from that. While...
View ArticleFor the Love of Suzie Louise: A Christmas Story
As Christmas 1963 approaches, a statue of the baby Jesus goes missing from the town manger in Skokie, Illinois. Its theft causes great distress to nearly everyone, including 9-year-old, flaxen-haired...
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