Ilan Stavans feels the time has come for the diversity of the modern Jewish experience to be reflected in the Haggadah we read at our Passover seders.
The year was 2002, the height of the Second Intifada, which saw hundreds of Israelis die in terror attacks.
Like many seeds for a book, the thought of writing about rabbinic discussions of sex came from an offhand comment made by a stranger.
According to a pious tradition, the unmarried men in a yeshivah were asked to leave the study hall whenever the rabbi began to teach one of the passages of the Talmud that frankly address the subject of sex, an act known in talmudic usage as “the mitzvah act.”
Moscow-born author and journalist Paul Goldberg first learned about the so-called blood libel — the hateful lie alleging Jews use Christian blood in their rituals — in a place where slander against the Jews is deeply rooted.
There is a bookshelf in my study that I have nicknamed “Amsterdam.”
The voice of Marvin Kalb, deeply familiar to any baby boomer, is calm, measured and authoritative.
A critically acclaimed novel told in the voice of an 8-year-old boy in the Warsaw Ghetto is the winner of the 2016 Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.