Reviews

A Jerusalem of Bizarre Thrills

By Chesky Kopel | Comment ()
Reviewed Film: Footnote (Hebrew: He’arat Shulayim), Dir. Joseph Cedar, Perf. Shlomo Bar Aba, Lior Ashkenazi, Alisa Rosen (United King Films, 2011). “The reception of my film here in [New York City] is especially crucial for me, second only to its reception in Jerusalem. Not because there ... Read more →

The Making of a Rosh Yeshivah Biography

By Shlomo Zuckier | Comment ()
Reviewed Book: Elyashiv Reichner, By Faith Alone: The Story of Rabbi Yehuda Amital (New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2011).   Biographies have the power to humanize even the most herculean warriors, the most charismatic statesman, the holiest saints. Relating an accomplished person’s ... Read more →

Strictly Kosher: How Haredi Literature Reflects and Influences Haredi Culture

By Davida Kollmar | Comment ()
Reviewed Book: Yoel Finkelman, Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011). Even at Yeshiva University, a Modern Orthodox institution, students are familiar with the haredi, or Yeshivish, community. This ... Read more →

The Untraveled Road from Ma’aleh Adumim to Alon Shevut

By Talya Laufer | Comment ()
Reviewed Book: Haim Sabato, In Quest of Your Presence: Conversations with Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonoth Books and Chemed Books, 2011). This past Rosh Hodesh Elul, for the first time in recent Israeli publishing history, a non-fiction book was sold out before ... Read more →

The Relationship of Orthodox Jews Believing in Denomination and Non-Denomination Believing Jews

By Shlomo Zuckier | Comment ()
The Relationship of Orthodox Jews Believing in Denomination and Non-Denomination Believing Jews BY: Shlomo Zuckier Reviewed Book: Adam Mintz (ed.), The Relationship of Orthodox Jews with Believing Jews of Other Religious Ideologies and Non-Believing Jews (New York: Yeshiva University Press; ... Read more →

The ArtScroll Revolution Examined: Religious Print Culture in the Information Age

By Shlomo Zuckier | Comment ()
BY: Shlomo Zuckier. Reviewed Book: Jeremy Stolow, Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2010). Price: $24.95. Known as “the people of the book,” Jews, one might say, are perhaps the ... Read more →

The Limits of Orthodox Sociology

By Yitzchak Ratner | Comment ()
BY: Yitzchak Ratner. Reviewed Book: Jeffrey S. Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Price: $24.95. A primary goal of a historian is to place a subject – be it a person, event, or idea – within a chronological context.  We would do well, then, to ... Read more →

Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and the Efficient Slaying of Multiple Birds

By Alex Ozar | Comment ()
BY: Alex Ozar. Reviewed Book: David Shatz, Jewish Thought in Dialogue: Essays on Thinkers, Theologies, and Moral Theories (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009). Price: $65.00 I am not aware of any discipline which exhibits more anxiety about whether or not it exists than does Jewish ... Read more →