Literature

The Agnon scholar, Jeffrey Saks, sees some Agnonian work in modern Israeli literature.

What do you get when you read George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda alongside Rav Soloveitchik’s Kol Dodi Dofek? A cross between Zionism and feminism, argues Eileen Watts.

Daniel Klein on how violence in the Bible plays out in the writings of Shadal and Gabriel Gárcia Márquez

Jeffrey Kobrin comments on the work and influence of Herman Wouk.

50 years after his passing, Agnon is as relevant as ever. Agnon expert and Lehrhaus Consulting Editor Jeffrey Saks explains.

The question of whether or not your writing is Jewish is not up to you, because writing ultimately belongs to the reader. Krauss’ avatar answers Ozick perfectly: “Jewish literature would have to wait, as all Jewish things wait for a perfection that in our hearts we don’t really want to come.” In the end, perhaps all we can do is kvetch and vacillate between different answers to the question of what is Jewish literature—because, of course, the answer was never the point.

Marina Zilbergerts presents the philosophical questions posed by Chaim Grade's “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” and compares his arguments to those of other major thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche.

In this essay, Edelman and Steinberg argue for a literature curriculum that integrates Jewish thought.

In a continuing series on great, modern Israeli thinkers, Joe Wolfson explores the powerful themes in a novel by Rav Haim Sabato.

A review of Yehoshua November’s The Concealment of Endless Light.