Book review

'Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land': America’s relationship with the Torah - review

The language America reaches for, at its best moments and its worst, has always been ours. Not borrowed. Ours. We wrote the story it keeps retelling. We are still here to see how it ends.

JULY 5, 2026|ByRAFFI CROUSE

Rare medieval Sefardi Torah scroll from the late 13th or early 14th century on display at ANU, Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv.

'Stalin’s Apostles': The Cambridge Five and the lost world of Jewish Communism - review

From elite universities to Soviet handlers, the Cambridge Five helped Stalin penetrate Britain’s security and decision-making core.

JULY 5, 2026|ByCOLIN SHINDLER

A JEWISH GIRL and her Chinese friends in the Shanghai Ghetto, 1945, from the collection of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.

'Kotsuji's Gift': The Japanese scholar who rescued Jewish refugees during World War II - review

The picture is cropped. A Japanese man standing to one side has been cut away. That man is Kotsuji, and the book is the long work of putting him back.

JUNE 28, 2026|ByRAFFI CROUSE

CHABAD ‘SHLUCHIM’ gather in front of 770 Eastern Parkway, New York, in 2022.

'Engaging the Essence': The Lubavitcher Rebbe as philosopher - review

While the Rebbe did not write a system, he spoke to occasions for 40 years. Bronstein anchors the structure of the Rebbe’s talks in his first discourse of 1951.

JUNE 22, 2026|ByNOAH ROTHSTEIN

'Cardozo on the Parashah': The magic of the Torah’s most ambiguous book - review

Snippets from Rabbi Nathan Cardozo’s commentary on the ‘Book of Leviticus’

MARCH 23, 2025ByMARION FISCHEL

After a year of trial-and-error, the Hebrews built a Tabernacle – so that God could dwell within them

'The Battle for the Jewish State': The ties that bind the US and Israel - review

Readers can assume that the author believes that her prescription for success in that struggle – an iron-clad US-Israel alliance – has a far greater chance with Trump as president.

MARCH 23, 2025ByNEVILLE TELLER

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, US, February 4, 2025; illustrative.

'Fear No Pharaoh': US Jews and slavery – from implicated to appalled - review

In his book Fear No Pharaoh, Richard Kreitner examines the reactions of six Jewish Americans to slavery and the Civil War.

MARCH 15, 2025ByGLENN C. ALTSCHULER

‘THE OLD PLANTATION,’ watercolor attributed to John Rose, possibly painted between 1785 and 1795 in the Beaufort District of South Carolina.

'Zionism and Jewish Culture': Getting to the true essence of Jewish nationalism - review

Zionism, Prof. Yitzhak Conforti shows, represents a continuation of an ethnic Jewish community that sustained its distinctiveness throughout centuries in the Diaspora.

MARCH 7, 2025ByNEVILLE TELLER

ENGRAVING BY Ephraim Moshe Lilien, produced for the Fifth Zionist Congress, Basel, Switzerland, 1901. The Hebrew inscription reads: ‘May our eyes behold your return in mercy to Zion.’

'Choosing Hope': The importance of hope for contemporary Jews - review

The book offers a brilliant and concise theology of hope which can be useful for us now during these times of so much darkness, despair, and denial.

MARCH 2, 2025ByRON KRONISH

An illustrative image of contemporary Jews.

'After Images': The tragedy of Albert Einstein’s cousin Robert - review

The cold-blooded execution of Robert Einstein’s family at the Focardo estate near Florence on August 3, 1944, reached beyond the areas generally depicted in Holocaust literature.

MARCH 2, 2025ByABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN