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Some of My Best Friends Are Mercurians
Twenty-five years ago, I met an old American expatriate in Moscow. I was a college kid, sent by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry More...

Retuning the World
Bob Dylan�s memoir reminds us that the musician, by interpreting the world, also did a lot to change it More...

Child of the Revolution
Roya Hakakian was 12 on the eve of the Iranian revolution, when she joined her Muslim friends in cheering Ayatollah Khomeini. A half dozen years later, the young Jewish woman dreamed of murdering him. More...

BOOKS: Everybody Paid a Price
Not many people could have had Elizabeth Frank on their shortlist to write a big Jewish novel More...

BOOKS: The Dance of Romain Gary
Novelist, diplomat, war hero and champion lover, Romain Gary finally gets the biography he deserves More...

Books: What Were They Thinking?
A crop of books looking at the peace process and its failure present countless new opportunities to have a front-row look at the missteps of our politicians -- and theirs More...

BOOKS: When the Concept Failed
Leaders� overconfidence in their strength and wisdom left the soldiers of 1973 with their backs against the wall More...

BOOKS: Preserved in Translation
Fifty years ago, the Viking Press in New York published "A Treasury of Yiddish Stories," a 630-page compendium edited by literary scholar Irving Howe and poet Eliezer Greenberg. On the dedication page appeared four stark words: "To the Six Million." More...

Books: A Time to Weep, or a Time to Smile?
A top academic takes a magisterial look at 350 years of American Jewish history. He knows his material, to be sure, so why does he shy away from telling us what it means? More...

BOOKS: Sex, Torah and Taboos
Two Orthodox authors try to understand where homosexuality fits into God�s plan for humanity -- and come to opposite conclusions More...

BOOKS: Just Because the Rambam Said It...
Were the �13 Principles� really meant to be taken as the final word on the Jewish faith? More...

BOOKS: The Bravery of Anti-Heroes
Collaborating on an ironic and compelling collection of stories, an Israeli and a Palestinian both find themselves fighting the tyranny of political clich� More...

BOOKS: When Brian Met Tzippy
With wit and compassion, Tova Mirvis uses a young couple�s relationship to challenge the hypocrisy she finds in the Orthodox world More...

Books: Fist in a Snowbank
He�s young, and it�s his first book, but David Bezmozgis, who sharply portrays the indignities endured by Soviet immigrants to North America, is attracting a deafening buzz. More...

Books: Two Dirty Words
It�s clear why the pejorative �shiksa� is offensive, but why should �conversion� also be off-limits? More...

Books: Messiah in an Armored Car
The central figure in historian Michael Andre Bernstein�s first novel is a rabbi who does not preach peace More...

The View from Outside
�Girl with a Pearl Earring� author Tracy Chevalier says she likes writing about people out of step with their surroundings. The description could just as well apply to her. More...

Peasant, Healer, Teacher, Mother
A biography of the Virgin Mary? Lesley Hazleton�s compelling investigation successfully bridges a distance of two millennia More...

Is Less Really More?
In examining how monotheism defeated worship of multiple gods, Jonathan Kirsch asks whether it didn�t all come down to politics More...

Inescapably Jewish
The terrible nature of his murder in Pakistan two years ago turned Daniel Pearl into a journalistic icon. Now his final words serve as inspiration for many of hisco-religionists to contemplate their identity. More...

Like Agnon, without the Profundity
A.B. Yehoshua has said his latest novel was inspired by Israel�s only winner of the Literature Nobel. That might not be such a good thing. More...

Books: Make Mine a Martini
Two anthologies of Jewish writing tell us more about the tastes of their editors than they do about recent trends in the field More...

Books: Making the Book of Radiance Sparkle
A new translation of a kabbalistic classic is itself a �Holy Wedding� between the mystical spirit of the Zohar and the spirit of American English More...

It�s Not Just about the Sex
Adam Thirlwell�s debut novel is full of graphic descriptions of coupling of all varieties, but the British wunderkind says the sex is only a vehicle to talk about the human condition More...

Writing with a Retractable Lens
First short-story collections by Joan Leegant and Aryeh Lev Stollman dazzle with their humanity and other-worldliness More...

The Covenant of 1796
A multi-generational history of a proud American family reveals volumes about the lives of Jewsin the country�s first century More...

Wanted: A Muslim Luther
Irshad Manji, feminist lesbian Muslim provocateur, would like to help reform her religion from within More...

Books: No New Yorkers, Mustaches or Jews
In their determination to keep their own kind off the small screen, Jewish network executives even made up findings saying viewers wouldn�t watch Jewish characters More...

Books: The �Desert Democracy�
Supporters of the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia speak of shared values, but even pragmatists like Dore Gold describea kingdom with disturbing links to terrorism and anti-Semitism More...

Books: Tuesdays without Morrie
Though a best-selling book about his college professor brought him fortune and fame, Mitch Albom had to put Morrie Schwartz behind him when writing his first novel More...

Books: Why We Fight
Two new briefs for the defense offer readers useful ammunition to wield in the ongoing struggle against the Israel-bashers More...

Books: The Law As Sanctifier
Eliezer Berkovits believed that halakhah had to be moral, and that there were cases where ethics even trumped the commandments. His philosophical writings remain fresh and pertinent nearly a decade after his death. More...

Books: Varieties of Painful Experience
In a book that explores the friendship of two women who share one another�s multifarious anguishes,the title �Bliss� is offered with a strong measure of irony More...

Books: A Prayer for the Living
Mourning for his father gave Ari Goldman an opportunity to reevaluate a relationship that had been difficult but rich More...

Books: Haunted by Loss
Though most of his fiction reflects his ongoing romance with Israel, Jonathan Wilson writes stories that are often funny and sardonic, whereas his novels look back darkly at recent Jewish history More...

Books: Black and Blue and White
Richard Powers�s riveting and rending saga, on the inescapability of race in the lives of the children of a Jewish scientist and his black Brahmin wife, might have been titled �Visible Man� More...

All in the Family
A monumental collaborative project celebrates the wide varieties of Jewish experience More...

Books: The Road to Revolution
�Great Neck� looks at how the best-of-times, worst-of-times 1960s changed the lives of smart Jewish kids from the �burbs More...

Books: Shaped by Our Choices
Wunderkind Dara Horn�s precocious first novel reflects her philosophy that it�s not our experiences that form us, but how we react to them More...

Books: The Writer after 9/11
American novelist Melvin Jules Bukiet came to Israel to teach -- and learned what�s different about writers here, and how to admire Israelis� �erotic awareness of death� More...

Books: A Literary Counterlife
Ziff: a Life?by Alan Lelchuk411pp;$25 More...

Books: A Double-Edged Blade
"Foiled: Hitler's Jewish Olympianby Milly Mogulof253pp;$17.95 More...

Books: Leaving the Shtetl Behind
"The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Shendl,'and 'Motl, the Cantor's Son'by Sholem Aleichem 318pp; $24.99 More...

Books: Gimme That No-God Religion
Nothing Sacred:The TruthAbout JudaismBy Douglas RushkoffCrown Publishers288pp; $24.95When Douglas Rushkoff lost faith in the Internet, he turned to Judaism, and now he�s ready to share �the truth� More...

Books: Life on the Periphery
Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russiaby Benjamin NatbansUniversity of California Press426pp,;$54.95 A scholar takes an energetic look at the way Jews lived in the late Russian Empire -- and, it turns out, things aren�t so different today More...

Books: Where They Feel They Belong
Welcome to Heavenly Heightsby Risa MillerSt. Martin's Press256 pp.; $23.95 Risa Miller draws her characters in such a way that any reader can understand why they choose to live in a settlement, even as they ignore the storm clouds gathering around them More...

Books: Smelted Away
The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Looting of Hungaryby Ronald W. ZweigWilliam Morrow312pp; $26.95The story of a train, laden withthe wealth of murdered Jews, that disappeared into the night More...

A Way through the World
Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrowby Arthur GreenJewish lights192pp$21.95Arthur Green takes some of the mystique out of kabbalah, by re-envisioning it as a guide for day-to-day life More...

Books: With Truth on His Side
Critics scoffed when Oscar Hijuelos published a novel about a �degenerate� musician being swept up by, but surviving, the Nazis, but he based his hero on a real-life character More...

Books: Children of the Revolution
Canadian novelist Nancy Richler blended childhood memories and her study of Russian social history to create a story of a woman caught up in the 1905 Russian Revolution More...

Books: Women Interrupted
Disturbances of the Inner Ear By Joyce HackettCarol & Graf277pp.;$25CarolenaBy Michael MailScribner UK310pp.; �15.99Some publishers apparently believe that young, unstable women haunted by the Holocaust spell literary success. They�re wrong. More...

Books: Blame It on the Wahhabis
The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terrorby Stephen SchwartzDoubleDay312pp$25An eclectic American writer looks at his adopted religion, Islam, and concludes that all that is wrong with it emanates from the Arabian peninsula More...

Books: A Black-Jewish Alliance That Worked
The Rescue of Jerusalemby Henry T. AubinSoho421pp;$30.00Was it the Kushites who saved Jerusalem from Assyrian conquest in 701 BCE? More...

Books: The Perfect Player
It was an unblemished game that made Sandy Koufax�s reputation as one of baseball�s greatest pitchers, but it was his refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur that made him the pride of Jewish America More...

Books: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
There�s nothing like an intifada to concentrate the mind of a Western immigrant on why he�s in Israel More...

Books: Lost at Sea
In recreating the life of her outcast Indian grandmother, Carmit Delman poignantly portrays the difficulties of her own lonely adolescence in an American immigrant family More...

Books: Just the Facts
Ariel Sharon gets a biography, but it barely begins to plumbthe complexities of the prime minister�s life and career More...

Books: The Gift That Keeps on Giving -- and Taking
Francine Klagsbrun wants people to understand the many facets of Judaism�s most important day, but doesn�t think it�s her job to force the Sabbath down their throats More...

Books: Divine Images
Long before his Mr. Spock turned the priestly finger-split into a Vulcan greeting, Leonard Nimoy was intrigued by the mystery behind the Priestly Blessing. Now, in another medium, he pursues the fascination with photos that are sure to arouse interest -- and ire. More...

Books: Let Us Praise Famous Jewish Mothers
What do Pauline Derzbacher, Henrietta Pressburg, Dvorah Zatoulovsky, Nettie Cherry and Minnie Schoenberg have in common? Once married, these women respectively became the Jewish mothers of Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Moshe Dayan, Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers. French-Jewish doctor and author Bruno Halioua has devoted a lively and well-researched book to these, and eight other mothers of world-famous Jews � writers Albert Cohen, Marcel Proust and Romain More...

Books: View from the Bully Pulpit
Growing up as a student in a Jewish day school in Washington, Rachel Simmons was both victim of the subtle cruelty of girls and victimizer. Now she�s trying to understand what that phenomenon is all about. More...

Books: Daughter to the Devil
It�s been a long, hard road to the truth for Monika Goeth, whose father was the concentration-camp commandant made infamous in �Schindler�s List� for shooting inmates randomly from his balcony More...

Books: He Made Our World Universal, Chaim Potok: 1929-2002
I went to school with Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter. Well, those weren�t exactly their names. We called them something else back then, but these friends of mine -- one the son of a hasidic rabbi and the other the son of a professor -- were definitely the Danny and Reuven portrayed so vividly in Chaim Potok�s "The Chosen." More...

Books: Six Days and More
Despite some black holes and a certain pro-Israel tilt, Michael Oren�s new history of the 1967 Mideast war is the most impressive study to date of that still reverberating conflict More...

Books: The Chemistry of Havoc
Carole Angier�s weighty look at the life, and death, of Primo Levi gracefully reflects his unyielding intellect and spirit More...

Books: Growing Pains
Dysfunctional, volatile though loving parents create a world of chaos and fear for their children More...

Books: The Shtetl Comes Alive
A search for his Jewish roots in Ukraine takes the author-like protagonist on a fairy-tale romp More...

Fringe Humor
A reporter meets and mingles with a bizarre assortment of radicals -- but never quite finds the joke More...

Between Belief and Delusion
Two psychiatrists trace the complex journey into the culturally alien worlds of the ultra-Orthodox Jews they have treated. More...

Angry Ghosts
Thane Rosenbaum�s wide-ranging new novel explores the vexing questions about how we tackle the memory of the Holocaust More...

Love Is in the Mail
An obsessed self-absorbed lover�s letters to his penpal become the vehicle for madness in David Grossman�s novel More...

Toxic Emissions
As talk of Jewish conspiracyhas gone global, Henry Ford�s 1920s anti-Semitism roars anew More...

Still Timid afterAll These Years
The Conservative movement�s new humash is a strong defense of the mind-over-the-heart approach to Judaism. But will it speak to the many who seek spirituality and the meaning of God? More...

Babel�s Revenge
A victim of Stalin�s purges, Isaac Babel was shot, with his last wish -- to finish his work -- denied. A new collection helps remedy that sin. More...

Destination Diaspora
Jewish life outside Israel is thriving, writes Larry Tye, belying conventional continuity surveys More...

The Man Who Mistook Platinum for His Friend
Oliver Sacks's difficult childhood has a lot to do with the neurologist and man he is today More...

Where Did It All Go Wrong?
In sneakily comic prose, Helen Schulman takes Louise, divorced and entangled with the ghost of her long lost beau, through a reverie of self-reflection More...

It�s Never Over
Passion, obsession and the demands of survival haunt the May-December couple of Gwen Edelman�s tale More...

Damaged Dynasty
The first English translation of K�roly Pap�s lost novel of obsession, helplessness and shame is a powerful portrait of prewar Hungarian Jewry More...

The Silenced Tongue
The lively, celebratory story of Yiddish, as Miriam Weinstein tells it, is ultimately a sad one More...

The �Red Matron�
Romanian Communist leader Ana Pauker wasn�t the tough Stalinist her peers made her out to be More...

Historical Complicity
An Iraqi academic�s accountof the building of the Dome of the Rock illuminates a world in which Muslim and Jewish traditions were deeply intertwined More...

Fear of Failure
With his new novel, it's time to stop speaking of Ethan Canin only in terms of writers like Cheever and Bellow. The physician-author's literary achievements hold up all on their own � though he may not believe it. More...

Outer Beauty
What American women wore in the early part of the century was the ultimate test of their Christian character, especially if they were Jewish. More...

A Stray Dog�s Life
Expectations are confused and confusing to the men and women of Yael Hedaya�s three novellas More...

A Journey from Guns to Books
When the Mexican-American author Ilan Stavans started writing seriously, in his early 20s, he had an epiphany, one he describes in his latest book. "Yes," he thought, "literature was the answer � my Promised Land, an authentic home." More...

Strange Bedfellows
An Italian-Catholic teacher finds his way into the hearts of his Satmar hasid students More...

Not a Time to Be Quiet
Yehuda Bauer, dean of Israel�s Holocaust scholars, refuses to be stifled by retirement. His latest book takes on Shoah �superstars� and scholars alike. More...

Holy Journey
As journalist Bruce Feiler traversed the Middle East to retrace the events of the Torah, he found that his learning went �from my head to my feet� More...

Dur�n, Dur�n
Khalid Dur�n thought his book on Islam for Jews would improve relations between the faiths. Instead, it has brought a death threat. More...

When Pharaoh Was Shamed
Using the same intelligence and erudition she applied to Genesis, Avivah Zornberg marshals Kafka, Kundera, Walter Benjamin and Rashi in her new study of Exodus to examine, among other things, the Egyptian king's insecurities More...

Where No Ultra-Orthodox Jew Has Gone Before
His companies may have lost 90 percent of their value in recent setbacks, but Yossel Gutnick remains a formidable force in Australian society. And he may well have created a model for a whole new mode of ultra-Orthodox behavior. More...

A Literary Cash Machine?
At an age when he could be winding down, publishing giant Jason Epstein is working to usher in the next new thing More...

Putting the Pieces Together
The people who brought you the Holocaust memoir 'Fragments,' and then withdrew it when it was proved a hoax, now want to sell you a report that definitively debunks their book ...along with a reprint of the original More...

Desperate Emigrations
Even for those fortunate enough to escape Hitler, the memories of the life left behind left an unbearably sad legacy More...

Double-Edged Sword
The Catholic Church didn't collaborate in the Holocaust, says James Carroll, but 2,000 years of anti-Jewish doctrine created fertile ground for it. Though penance has been made, says Carroll, the Church has not yet gone far enough in its reforms. More...

Bulletins of His Own Condition
In his magisterial biography of America's most honored writer, James Atlas succeeds in the tricky task of separating the facts about Saul Bellow from the fiction More...

A Waltz to the Death
When Alma Ros� took charge of the Auschwitz women�s orchestra, she thought her life had been saved. But she was really just playing for time. More...