One of our greatest peacemakers didn’t speak about his Jewishness; he didn’t have to
In speaking out against Nazism and nuclear war, Norman Cousins was both humanitarian and prophet
Biography
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Culture What We Get Wrong About Karl Marx
While never a believer in Judaism, and at times vicious about the faith, the revolutionary philosopher Karl Marx came from an indisputably Jewish background: Both of his parents’ fathers were rabbis. The fact that he was not, himself, Jewish is the result of a curious historical circumstance. Marx’s father, Heinrich, born Herschel Levi, earned his…
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Books ‘This man is not going to daunt me:’ Talking with Philip Roth’s biographer, Blake Bailey
Editor’s note: Two weeks after this interview with Blake Bailey was published, multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct. Details of the allegations may be found here. A masterful writer obsessively preoccupied with whether and how he’d be valued by history; a deeply sensitive charmer with a real…
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The Schmooze New Biography Explores Bob Dylan’s Spiritual Journey
“Bob Dylan was born a Jew. Then he wasn’t, but now he’s back,” sang Adam Sandler in The Chanukah Song, voicing all of our dads’ anxieties over Dylan’s religious identity. A new biography “Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life” by Scott Marshall, aims to explore Dylan’s spiritual odyssey. Out on June 20th, Marshall’s book promises to…
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Culture How Sammy Davis Jr. Became the Great Jewish Entertainer
● Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey with My Father By Tracey Davis and Nina Bunche Pierce Running Press, 208 pages, $30 ‘Even when my own people would complain to me about racism,” Sammy Davis Jr. told his daughter shortly before the end of his life, “I would always say, ‘You got it easy. I’m…
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Culture Was Adolf Hitler Leader or Follower?
Hitler: A Biography By Ian Kershaw W.W. Norton, 1,030 pages, $25.95 Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich By Robert Gerwarth Yale University Press, 336 pages, $35 Heinrich Himmler: A Life By Peter Longerich Oxford University Press, 1,072 pages, $34.95 Those who can, make history; those who can’t, write history; those who can’t write history write…
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Culture Jerusalem’s Three Unauthorized Portraits
Jerusalem: The Biography By Simon Sebag Montefiore Knopf, 688 pages, $35 Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World By James Carroll Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 432 pages, $28 Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem By Carol Delaney Free Press, 336 pages, $26 A Google search for Jerusalem brings more than 13,000 news hits…
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Culture The Man Who Out-Sainted Einstein
James Franck, a Jewish scientist who was born in Hamburg, Germany, and was a co-winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in physics, is honored by The University of Chicago’s James Franck Institute and by the James Franck German-Israel Binational Program, hosted at five leading Israeli technical schools. Yet nothing commemorates the work Franck did inside…
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
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Culture They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
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Culture ‘A Complete Unknown’ proves that one thing about Bob Dylan will certainly endure
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