Risa Levitt Kohn

Review By – August 19, 2024 Adam Jortner’s A Promised Land is a magisterial history of America’s first Jewish citizens. It weaves tales of prominent leaders like Gershom Seixas and Jonas Phillips with little-known accounts of revolutionary Jewish troops, fundraising for the first synagogues (and subsequent intracommunal disputes), and Jews responding to antisemitism by challenging their antagonists to life-endangering duels.

The virus that is anti­semitism takes a num­ber of forms, but it might just be pos­si­ble to vac­ci­nate peo­ple against one par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­can vari­ant. I’m talk­ing about the form that insists Amer­i­ca is a ​“Chris­t­ian nation” — a nation and gov­ern­ment found­ed by Chris­t­ian peo­ple for Chris­t­ian pur­pos­es. Peo­ple who say these things often but­tress their claims with vague ref­er­ences to the US Con­sti­tu­tion and Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence as Chris­t­ian doc­u­ments.

Review By – August 12, 2024 Between the Bridge and the Bar­ri­cade is a ground­break­ing study of how Jews found (or failed to find) knowl­edge through translation.