Showing Results 1 - 10 of 11
Sixty years ago, Jacob, who was known in his quarter as Old Jacob, was living in the rue de la Mortellerie. He ran a successful business selling old clothes, scrap metal and even, on occasion, old…
The ten years that followed the arrival of Abraham and Beatrice in Lublin were peaceful and therefore happy, thanks to the Almighty, blessed be He. Abraham and Kalonymos gradually improved the print…
How long did I wander in Caesarea,
That enchanting place where my heart had adored you.
—Racine, Bérénice, I, 4.
I was only a child of the peace, born into a strange postwar. How could I have…
No Jew, whether a believer or an unbeliever, Zionist or anti-Zionist, can be objective when what is at stake is Israel and the two and a half million Jews who built a State in a land equally Holy for…
For fifty years, Jews of the West were protected by the shield of Nazism. As Bernanos wrote, Hitler had given antisemitism a bad name.We supposed this bad name to be permanent. Yet it…
“No,” said Golder.
He moved the shade with a brusque gesture, so that the lamp light fell full on the features of Simon Marcus, who sat opposite him, at the other side of the table. For a…
Certainly, the collective will of diaspora Jews is assured neither of success nor of perennial life. It is situated in history, subject to the erosion and constraints of history, equally conditioned…
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…
Charles-Valentin Alkan was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. His “Ancienne melodie de la synagogue,” a prelude for solo piano or organ, was published in 1847, along with…
Political modernity, by making the varied dimensions of existence automatic and, in particular, by separating the political from the religious, posed the problem of Jewish identity in a dramatic…