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“Back at home, I pulled myself together and reflected on what had happened. Given how the people had behaved when they heard the wrongheaded and hateful rabbi’s curse of excommunication, I realized…
After finishing the letter, Elisheva handed it back to Hogeh and gracefully added: “Would that letters such as this might appear more often in our literature! For only such refinement of language will…
[ . . . ] Braendel dragged the poor woman into the smoky room, which stank of sweat, beer, and wine, and cried out in a loud voice, “Aren’t you ashamed, you children of honest Jews, to drink and…
[ . . . ] The sofer’s work is poorly compensated. There is an old proverb about how the soferim never grow wealthy in the land of Israel. I don’t know who gave birth to that pearl detached from the…
Laws are always tainted by the passions and the prejudices of the legislator.
—Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
In 1807, Mordecai Blum, his wife Rebecca, and his son David were living in a…
At last the time has come. Amid the returning horde, I shall be once more separated from myself. The drama unfolds between the domed sky and the crazily calm sea. Order gorges itself on conquests: it…
I had learned of Louise’s suicide upon my return to Blida, my hometown. Spring had just filled the streets with the insolent beauty of those impassive young women. Violent yet secretive, as in Spain…
Nathan, the shoemaker from Porisov, a small Jewish village in Poland, came home one evening shortly before his departure for Colombia with a Torah scroll under his arm. With a slight shiver, he lay…
In truth Ezra is still very young, but sometimes these marriages are the ones that turn out best. I used to think it was a crime to do this to these children, but I see so many marriages for love…
“Act dumb,” Otilia advised me. “Change the subject.” To help me understand what she meant, she illustrated by relating a conversation she had had with a neighbor. It was December, when a great deal of…