Jonathan Kirsch
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Articles by Jonathan Kirsch
Clashing American Traditions
Pamela S. Nadell, Antisemitism: An American Tradition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2025) pp. 332. When Jonathan Sarna, rightly acknowledged as the Dean of American Jewish historians, wrote the second edition of “American Judaism” in 2019, he had to account for something that was not as clearly present 15 years earlier when the first edition was published, namely, the thriving of Orthodox Judaism in the United States. America has once been considered the “goldena medina, but a treifena land.
Misterio, historia de amor, drama histórico: reseña de ‘La anatomía del exilio’ de Zeeva Bukai
En su primer libro, Zeeva Bukai profundiza en el trauma del exilio con elegancia, pasión, perspicacia y puro suspenso. La historia en el corazón de La anatomía del exilio por Zeeva Bukai (Delphinium Books) se remonta a la Guerra de los Seis Días en 1967 y la Guerra de Yom Kippur en 1973, una época en la que las guerras que Israel se vio obligado a librar tenían comienzos y finales que se medían en días.
Mystery, Love Story, Historical Drama: Review of ‘The Anatomy of Exile’ by Zeeva Bukai
The story at the heart of The Anatomy of Exile by Zeeva Bukai (Delphinium Books) harks back to the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, an era when the wars that Israel was forced to fight had beginnings and endings that were measured in days. But we are reading her first novel in the shadow of October 7, and we come to her book with the knowledge that, in truth, our problems are deeply rooted in history and extend far into the unknown future.
The Year In Auctions: Top 12 Star Trek Memorabilia Items Sold In 2025
For many fans, collecting is one of the primary ways in which they engage with the world of Star Trek. Faithful reproductions can be exciting, but these collectors seek the real deal: screen-used and production-made props, costumes, and other items of Star Trek memorabilia.
A Portrait of Heartbreak and Compassion After the Wreckage of War in 'Dog'
One Jewish tradition that is not much talked about nowadays is our attitude toward the dog. “He who rears dogs,” the Mishnah teaches, “is like one who rears swine.” The same contempt for the canine survived in the shtetls of Eastern Europe: “You are a dog with ears” was among the harshest of Yiddish insults. Not until the birth of modern Zionism, in fact, did the dog come to be regarded among Jews as an animal to be treated with respect and affection.
An Exploration of German Exiles in Hollywood in 'Weimar Under the Palms'
A story is told about a day when motion picture director Otto Preminger, who sought a safe haven from the Nazis and achieved fame and fortune in the American movie industry, overheard a conversation that was conducted in Hungarian. “Don’t you guys know you’re in Hollywood?” he quipped.
Visiting the Tehran of the Mid-Twentieth Century
On the strength of her earlier novels, including “Harem,” “Courtesan,” “The Last Romanovs” and “Scent of Butterflies,” Dora Levy Mossanen has been hailed by Amy Ephron as “an Isabel Allende of Persia.” Born in Israel, raised in Iran, and a prominent figure in literary Los Angeles, she uses her superb skills as a storyteller to introduce us to believable and compelling men and women who happen to live in exotic times and places.
Visiting the Tehran of the Mid-Twentieth Century in Dora Levy Mossanen’s “Love and War in the Jewish Quarter”
On the strength of her earlier novels, including “Harem,” “Courtesan,” “The Last Romanovs” and “Scent of Butterflies,” Dora Levy Mossanen has been hailed as “an Isabel Allende of Persia.” Born in Israel, raised in Iran, and a prominent figure in literary Los Angeles, she uses her superb skills as a storyteller to introduce us to believable and compelling men and women who happen to live in exotic times and places.
Examining a Deity Made in Our Own Image
Jack Miles embraced an audacious literary device in his masterwork, “God: A Biography,” which presents the life story of the Almighty as if the authors of the Bible were telling the life story of a character in a book. The Pulitzer Prize Board endorsed his approach by awarding him the Pulitzer Prize in the category of biography in 1996.
“Squirrel Hill” Shows Violence Against Jews Can Happen Anywhere
Mass murder in America is such a commonplace that attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, which happened only three years ago, is not much talked about nowadays.“Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood” by Mark Oppenheimer (Knopf) is a rich and important effort to write that day into history by showing us in vivid detail what the Jewish community endured and survived on that day.
Seeing through the eyes of a traveling truth-teller
(November 3, 2021 / Jewish Journal) Bernard-Henri Lévy is almost always described as a philosopher, a public intellectual or both. Yet these terms are misleading. He does not issue pronouncements from the comfort and safety of a study or a studio in Paris.
U of M Clinical Affairs Launches Mobile Healthcare Vehicle
Access to health care is typically measured by insurance coverage, which is correlated with people seeking preventative screenings and care. However, other social determinants such as transportation, shelter, cost and language are also factors in how accessible health care may be. To help address disparities that may be created by these factors, the University of Minnesota Office of Academic Clinical Affairs is launching the Mobile Health Initiative vehicle.
Seeing Through the Eyes of a Traveling Truth-Teller
Bernard-Henri Lévy is almost always described as a philosopher, a public intellectual or both.Yet these terms are misleading.He does not issue pronouncements from the comfort and safety of a study or a studio in Paris.As we find out in his new book, “The Will to See: Dispatches From a World of Misery and Hope” (Yale University Press), Lévy has put himself in harm’s way in the dangerous and troubled places that he writes about, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
In His New Book, David Steinberg Talks Funny Business
David Steinberg started his career as a stand-up comedian in 1968 and achieved the distinction of 140 appearances on The Tonight Show during its golden age under Johnny Carson.
The Disturbing Realization that “People Love Dead Jews”
The bitter ironies that abound in Dara Horn’s new book begin with the title itself: “People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present” (Norton). The author is plainspoken about her use of the off-putting and even heart-breaking phrase: “This book explores the many strange and sickening ways in which the world’s affection for dead Jews shapes the present moment,” she announces.
The “Many Faces” of the Jewish Immigrant Experience
Born 102 years ago in Jerusalem, Nehemiah Persoff was the son of two founding members of the first Hebrew-language theater company in pre-state Israel.
The Shoah and the Struggle for Beauty
The parents of Mindy Weisel were married in Bergen-Belsen, the notorious concentration camp that was converted into a shelter for displaced persons at the end of World War II. Weisel herself was among the first babies to be born there in January 1947. And it was her discovery of drawings of a sunrise, penciled by her father while still in the camp, that inspired her to become an artist.
Book Review: “Is Superman Circumcised?”
The title of Roy Schwartz’s “Is Superman Circumcised?” (McFarland) is funny, to be sure, but the book is no joke. Rather, it is a fascinating, illuminating and highly accomplished study of a comic book character as the crucial key to understanding both the mysteries of Jewish history and destiny and the makings of modern American civilization.
"To All Who Call In Truth" by Michael Oren
Michael Oren is a celebrated and accomplished Israeli historian, diplomat and combat veteran. As it happens, he was born and raised in in New Jersey, and now he returns to the scene of his own American adolescence in a compelling novel, “To All Who Call in Truth” (Wicked Son).
Book Review: The Story of Esther Meets the Story of America
The year is 1853, the place is a Women’s Rights Convention in New York City, and the speaker is Sojourner Truth, a woman who has escaped from enslavement in the South. She is illiterate, but she knows her Bible stories. “Queen Esther come forth, for she was oppressed, and felt there was a great wrong,” she told the crowd, “and she said I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king.
Forgotten spies who fought the Nazis in the Middle East
Troops on leave in 1942 at a Cairo train station. Gershom Gorenberg writes that the region's battles "changed the shape of the war, and of the Middle East." (AP Photo/Weston Haynes) More than a half-century after the Allied victory in World War II, Normandy and Stalingrad tend to overshadow the people and events that gave the war its global reach.
'Sergeant Salinger'
D. Salinger wrote himself into American letters in 1951 with “The Catcher in the Rye,” an enduring best-seller about the young, rebellious Holden Caulfield that still graces high school English curricula. But despite his early success, Salinger spent the rest of his life hiding from his own celebrity.
'Sapiens: A Graphic History'
Consider the phenomenon known as “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” First written in Hebrew and self-published in Israel in 2011, the book by Yuval Noah Harari found an American publisher in 2014, quickly became an international best-seller in 60 languages, and then morphed into a kind of multi-media empire called Sapienship.
'Tales of the Holy Mysticat' Provides a Fresh Take on Jewish Mysticism
Rabbi Rachel Adler is a woman of many accomplishments. She is a celebrated and revered feminist theologian. She is the David Ellenson Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. She is the author of Engendering Judaism, the first book by a female theologian to win a National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought.
‘Golem Girl’ Vividly Illustrates a Life Spent Overcoming Disabilities
Memoirs and autobiographies often start with the very moment of the author’s birth. But the way that Riva Lehrer describes herself as a newborn is shocking and heartbreaking — a telling example of the both the power of her prose and the impact of the story she sets out to tell in “Golem Girl: A Memoir” (One World/Random House). “The day I was born I was a mass, a body with irregular borders,” she writes.
Sisters, Secrets and Shivah in the Novel ‘Evening’
“I have always been intrigued by what is hidden,” announces a character in “Evening,” the latest novel by Nessa Rapoport (Counterpoint). The voice we hear belongs to Eve, a woman who (not unlike the author herself) was born into a Jewish family in Toronto but “sought grandeur and danger in New York.” As the book opens, Eve has returned to join her family at the funeral of her sister, Tam, which is the occasion for a long-delayed reunion that is blighted by shared loss.
Killing millions from behind their desks
Adolf Eichmann, a chief architect of Hitler's Final Solution, stands in a glass cage, flanked by guards, in a courtroom in Jerusalem in 1961 during his trial for war crimes. (AP photo) When Dan Gretton, a British author, activist and teacher, looked out on the North Sea from the Suffolk coast on a gray day in the winter of 2006, a curious and provocative thought occurred to him.
Watching the Wall Between Church and State Crumble
Americans have been guaranteed the freedom of religion under the First Amendment for more than two centuries, but it’s not a right that we can or should take for granted. That’s the alarming message in “The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State” by Howard Gillman and Erwin Chemerinsky, which is the latest title in the “Inalienable Rights Series” from Oxford University Press.
Novel’s Russian Jews Find Rough Going in Israel
The setting of “Jerusalem as a Second Language,” a new novel by Rochelle Distelheim (Aubade Publishing), harks back to a remarkable moment in history. The year is 1998. The place is St. Petersburg. And the very first person we meet is Mikhail Gorbachev.
Timothy Snyder Ties Freedom to Health in ‘Our Malady’
“Health and history” is how Timothy Snyder describes the focal point of his latest book, “Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty From a Hospital Diary” (Crown). Struggling to recover from a about of appendicitis and its complications, he suffered from “a sense that nothing works and nothing can be done.” But he quickly realized that much more than his own recovery was at stake.
A Conversation With Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy
Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy, co-authors of “Never Alone,” spoke with Jewish Journal book editor Jonathan Kirsch via Zoom from Jerusalem. Jewish Journal: You point out in “Never Alone” that a million Jews have made aliyah from the former Soviet Union. How did Israel change as a result of their arrival? Natan Sharansky: The Jews who came from Russia were people who, for at least two generations, suffered from anti-Semitism but were disconnected from everything Jewish.
New Memoir Reveals Natan Sharansky’s Life as a Jewish Activist
From Russia came the first pioneers of the Jewish state in modern Israel, including Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Golda Meir, all of whom were born as subjects of the czar. Yet the fall of Imperial Russia in 1917 barred the gates to the millions of Jews who remained behind in the Soviet Union for another seven crucial decades.
Excerpt: When Natan Sharansky Met Nelson Mandela
ON FEBRUARY 11, 1990, FOUR YEARS TO THE DAY after my release, the South African government freed Nelson Mandela. He had served twenty-seven years in prison. Over the nearly three decades, some in the West had honored him, others denounced him. Now, it seemed the whole world greeted him enthusiastically. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League. Since we had met in Moscow during Hanukkah 1974, Abe had been my trusted accomplice.
Something for Everyone in ‘Night Archer’ Stories
We first came to know Michael Oren as a historian and the author of best-selling history books such as “Power, Faith, and Fantasy” and “Six Days of War.” Then he reinvented himself as a diplomat, serving the State of Israel as ambassador to the United States. Now we meet Oren as a teller of tales. “The Night Archer and Other Stories” (Post Hill Press/A Wicked Son Book) is a collection of 51 short stories, each one exquisitely crafted and deeply revealing.
‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ Makes the Case for Soviet Influence in the Trials
“The myth of the Nuremberg Moment,” according to historian Francine Hirsch in “Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II” (Oxford University Press), is that the trial of the surviving Nazi leadership for war crimes “celebrated the power of American leadership and Western liberal ideals.” But, she insists, “[t]he real story of Nuremberg is messy.” Significantly, the Allies chose Nuremberg, “the cradle of the Nazi movement,” as the...
‘Modern Kosher’ Offers a Taste of Jewish Cuisine’s Evolution
Now that we are all doing a lot more cooking at home, “Modern Kosher: Global Flavors, New Traditions” by Michael Aaron Gardiner (Rizzoli) is an especially timely cookbook. Gardiner also offers recipes that are especially appropriate for Rosh Hashanah. But the book is so inventive and inviting that it has a shelf life that will extend far beyond our present circumstances. The starting point, of course, is kashrut.
‘Nazi Menace’ Serves as Timely History Lesson
“The Death of Democracy” is the title of Benjamin Carter Hett’s account of Weimar Germany, a time and place to which America today has been frequently compared. Like the second decade of the third millennium, the 1920s and early ’30s inaugurated a “shocking new world,” and democracy failed not only in Germany but elsewhere in Europe.
Nazis Have Upper Hand in Page-Turning ‘What-If’ WWII Novel 'Rocket’s Red Glare'
“What if” is the classic starting point for speculative fiction. What if Nazi Germany had conquered Great Britain in 1940? That’s the premise of Len Deighton’s “SS-GB.” What if Germany and Japan had defeated the United States and divided up North America between them? Philip K.
‘New Jewish Canon’ Provides Much Food for Thought
Whether applied to movies, songs, restaurants or presidents, any list of “bests” is a highly subjective exercise that serves mostly as a conversation starter and sometimes as a “cause de guerre” in the culture wars. If we style the list as a “canon,” however, the discourse is considerably more consequential.
One Israeli Soldier’s Psyche Comes to Light in ‘The Drive’
The nameless young Israeli soldier whose voice we hear in “The Drive,” a novel by Yair Assulin (New Vessel Press), is driving on the coastal highway with his father and thinking back to his tour of duty in the Israeli army. Nowadays, we hear a lot of talk by politicians about the ambitious plans that the rank-and-file soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will be responsible for carrying out, but we hear almost nothing from the soldiers themselves.
‘Her Sister’s Tattoo’ Is an Insightful and Compassionate Tale of Sisterhood and Activism
Ellen Meeropol’s last name is famous among those of us who still recall the tragic case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were put to death in 1953 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. Their two young sons, Robert and Michael, were adopted by a couple named Meeropol, and the author is married to Robert. “Her Sister’s Tattoo” (Red Hen Press), Meeropol’s engaging and compelling new novel, is not about the Rosenbergs, but the case casts a long shadow over the book.
‘Surviving Autocracy’ Attacks Trump’s Failings, Warns of His Power
The first book by Masha Gessen that I reviewed in the Journal was “Where the Jews Aren’t,” an account of Stalin’s cynical attempt to co-opt the Zionist dream by settling his Jewish citizens in a remote backwater of the Russian Far East. Born in Russia and now living, teaching and writing in New York, Gessen is a leading historian and critic of authoritarianism, both in Russia and the United States.
Playwright Pulls Back the Curtains of His Life
Born in Brooklyn and now living in Los Angeles, award-winning playwright David Adjmi (“Stunning,” “Marie Antoinette” and “The Evildoers,” among others) is a shining exemplar of a certain variant of the American Dream. A clue is given at the very outset of “Lot Six: A Memoir” when he refers to both “my shrinks” and “classmates and teachers from my yeshiva” and when he recalls how his childhood experience of the Broadway stage inspired a longing to achieve “intensity and greatness” in his own life.
Author Says Hitler Is Not the Only One to Blame for Atrocities
Every radical movement begins with a core of activists, but only rarely does it succeed in taking and holding power in a great nation. Adolf Hitler, for example, “squeaked into power,” as historian Robert Gellately writes in “Hitler’s True Believers: How Ordinary People Became Nazis” (Oxford University Press); only later did the Nazi Party turn into a mass movement.
War is Told Through the Eyes of a Woman’s Letters to Her Beloved
The premise of “Love in the Blitz: The Long-Lost Letters of a Brilliant Young Woman to Her Beloved on the Front” (Harper) may strike you as a novelist’s contrivance. Eileen Alexander, a graduate of Cambridge University, picked up a pen and started to write letters to a college friend named Gershon Ellenbogen a month or so before the outbreak of World War II. Their correspondence lasted throughout the war and amounted to some 1,400 intimate and illuminating letters.
Aly Answers Question of Holocaust Complicity
The chain of events that led to Kristallnacht began in Warsaw during the summer of 1938, as we are shown in the opening pages of “Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945” by Götz Aly, translated by Jefferson Chase (Henry Holt & Co. /Metropolitan Books). The Polish government issued an order that revoked the Polish citizenship of Jews who had been living in Nazi Germany for more than five years.
Faith and Science Butt Heads in ‘Digging Up Armageddon’
Har-Megiddo, a Hebrew place name that translates as the Mount of Megiddo, is mentioned a dozen times in the Tanakh, but it is better known in Western tradition as Armageddon. Starting in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian scriptures, Armageddon is understood to be the site of the final battle between the forces of good and evil that will take place at the end of the world.
Unearthing Buried Memories in ‘I Want You to Know We’re Still Here’
Among Esther Safran Foer’s distinctions is that she is the matriarch of America’s first family of Jewish-American letters. Her three sons are Jonathan, Franklin and Joshua, each one a best-selling author. Now that she tells her own story in “I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir” (Random House/Tim Duggan Books), we see for ourselves where the literary DNA of the Safran family originated. According to her birth certificate, Esther Safran was born Sept.
New memoir looks at growing up on a kibbutz in Israel’s early days
Imagine a little girl who has just finished third grade, “barely over four feet high and 60 pounds,” charged with the job of tending a herd of dairy cows, “each nearly twice my height and weighing around 1,500 pounds.” The scene, as richly evoked by Rachel Biale in her enchanting and compelling memoir, “Growing Up Below Sea Level: A Kibbutz Childhood,” is emblematic of its place and time: the State of Israel in its early years of sovereignty.
Reconciling ‘Normal’ With 'Extraordinary’ in 'Don't Go Crazy Without Me'
Lott is a widely published memoirist, essayist and reporter, and the author of “In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists.” She teaches creative writing and literature at Antioch University. Perhaps the most telling entry on her CV is that she works with psychiatrists at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute in writing trauma case studies about their young patients.
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