Tablet Magazine

This was my agent asking what seemed like a straightforward question in the fall of 2005. I had just left my home in Brooklyn—kicking and screaming—for a new life on the tenure track, with a mortgage, a lawn, and an adult sized future before me. I loved my life in New York. I loved my friends, I loved being able to go to hear live music on press comps on a regular basis. My wife and I had already been together for a decade and we were in a wonderful place in our relationship. The only paradise we can know is the one we have lost. Proust said that. And we know what Joni said about paved paradise. I had just moved to a place where I felt like the best thing I could do was stay inside. It was a good time to write a book.

A new documentary traces the nontraditional spiritual journey of Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie

Art and Ilene were standing on the upper deck of the Saaremaa ferry. Art had already wolfed down an open-faced sandwich made with mealy caraway bread, butter, a peppered hard-boiled egg and Baltic anchovies, and was knocking back a portly dark-green bottle with a white castle on its coat of hops. Their red Opel, a free upgrade courtesy of a toothy manager at the Tallinn airport, was sailing the short passage from the mainland in the ferry’s bowels.

Jean Strouse’s new book shines a light on John Singer Sargent’s most important but largely forgotten Jewish patrons, the Wertheimers

I am Black and I am Jewish. I cannot put one part of myself aside, even if other people believe I should be ‘just Jewish’ right now

Some of the greatest minds in America have gathered in the pages of the country’s leading weekly to declare how little they understand things now, and how little they care to understand them moving forward

The oldest synagogue painting of its kind in North America finds a new home

How to add some spice to the traditional American menu

What’s behind the simultaneous shift in voting patterns of Jews, Blacks, Hispanic Americans, and Asians?

Rising up from his political grave, the ex-President cements U.S. partnership with Iran in Lebanon while Israel meekly gives up its gains.