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I'M A GREAT lover of the English language, but I must confess that, lately, I've come to dread three words in particular. You hear them everywhere--at dinner, at the office [...]

I WAS RECENTLY sipping on chocolat chaud while visiting Paris, observing life leisurely unfurling in the charming Place des Vosges. I found myself contemplating a very difficult question. Like everything [...]

How to make sense of the upcoming presidential election? Those of us reared on reason, logic, and basic human decency find ourselves a bit befuddled these days, trying to make [...]

GOOD NEWS, FELLOW Americans: It's civil war time! The violence, praise the Lord, unfurls exclusively on the silver screen, where the tortured protagonists of Alex Garland's new blockbuster--unimprovably named Civil [...]

The central commandment found in American etiquette Torah is this old chestnut: Never discuss religion or politics. Do so, and you run the risk of offending those who hold different [...]

The other month, I attended a conference thick with members of the clergy. It had everything you would expect: bad bagels for breakfast, a hurried nondenominational prayer to kick things [...]

EARLIER THIS YEAR, a Seattle-based journalist named Tariq Ra'ouf took to social media to explain the logic behind the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been rocking American cities for months. 'We [...]

Tis the season of 'The Artist': On screen, in print, and on stage, the man of the hour is the creative genius, the absolutist, the martyr, the suffering sinner redeemed [...]

ADDRESSING SENIOR SS officers in Poznan on October 4, 1943, Heinrich Himmler was in a cheerful mood. The total extermination of the Jews, he told his minions, was going swimmingly; [...]

ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, a band of Hamas terrorists breached an internationally recognized border and crossed into Israel. Over the next twelve hours, they committed unspeakable horrors against a defenseless [...]

IT WAS LISA del Giocondo who first alerted me to the perils of photography. I've been visiting her for years at her spacious home in the Louvre, and I have [...]

THE BEST MOVIE you'll see this year--or, if I'm being honest, this decade--is about two men having a protracted argument about God. If you merely watch the trailer, you may [...]

Once upon A time, goes an old Hasidic tale, the great Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was walking down the street when he ran into a fellow Jew. It was [...]

I'D FORGOTTEN NEARLY everything about my years in school, which, given my mild allergic reaction to sclerotic and coercive bureaucracies, is merciful. But one thing I do remember: a day, [...]

ONE DAY THIS winter, I found myself staring into a deep, dark, menacing hole. I mean that literally: I was visiting Khor Virap, an Armenian monastery in the foothills of [...]

A FEW WEEKS ago, I was having dinner with some friends in Texas. The group, to use an oft-abused term correctly, was diverse--Jews and Catholics and evangelicals, young and old, [...]

I HAVE A confession to make: I can't get enough of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Give me another teary tell-all and I'm all in. Indulge me with a made-for-reality-TV [...]

WHAT TO MAKE of the midterm elections? You may, if you wish, lend your ear to the ululations of our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters, who are eager to tell [...]

CAN YOU BELIEVE that Halbrand insulted Miriel, queen regent of Numenor, by saying she was either blind or an elf-lover? What about all the drama at Princess Rhaenyra and Ser [...]

One of the most spiritually meaningful journeys of my life involved the quest for a desperately needed cup of coffee. My wife and I were in Italy to attend a [...]

Late at night, after the dishes have all been cleared and the kids put to bed, most of my friends cast a quick, furtive look around to make sure no [...]

THE MOST MOVING spiritual experience I've had in the past decade didn't take place in the pews of my synagogue. It did not involve a rabbi, or reading from the [...]

The multiverse is upon us! Everywhere you turn in popular culture these days, it seems like the world is not enough: From hit TV shows to blockbuster films, plot lines [...]

These days, it seems, my friends fall into two groups: The Red Hots and the Blue Birds. The Red Hots are the angry sort. They stand, like fly fishermen, knee-deep [...]

DIZENGOFF STREET, A tree-lined corridor of commerce and pleasure, is Tel Aviv's main artery. Squint a little, and you could easily imagine that you're standing not in sunbaked Israel, a [...]

WE JEWS KNOW death. Leaf through the Talmud, that treasure trove of rabbinic wisdom, lore, and law, and you'll find the grim reaper loafing about on every other page, inspiring [...]

IN 1947, THE three most exciting Jews in American entertainment got together to plan their first collaboration. Jerome Robbins had struck Broadway box office gold with On the Town three [...]

ARE YOU BORED? In need of distraction? Hungry for a morsel of entertainment? Let's review pop culture's offerings. Over at the smorgasbord of TV now available on every streaming service [...]

It's the most wonderful time of the year, and in our jingle-belling hearts and our hap-happiest TV ads, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. But this year, Americans [...]

IF YOU DON'T pay too much attention to pop culture, you may be forgiven for thinking that the story of the past fifty years in American entertainment goes something like [...]

Have you watched the new Netflix drama everyone's talking about? It's riveting: It tells the story of Jacob Cohen, a brilliant professor of English literature at an Ivy League university [...]

THE GODLINESS OF GAMING American popular culture is not particularly welcoming of anyone committed to serious moral reflection. Dip your toes in the torrent of TV shows that floods the [...]