Category: Book Review

Herod, Bar Kochba, Trump and Huckabee: A Battle for Eternity

On By SarahIn Ancient Rome, Archaeology, Architecture, Biblical Geography, Book Review, Crisis, Eikha, Fourth of Juy, Hebrew, Heroism, Holy Sites, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish Identity, Nationalism, October 7, Religion, The Destruction of the Temple, Tisha B'Av, War, Western CivilizationLeave a comment

Last week, on a beautiful June night, I found myself in the eastern Judean desert, not far from Bethlehem, at the foot of ancient Herodium, a lavish palace built by King Herod between 23 and 15 BCE. Herod was a widely despised, Roman-appointed client king of Israel, Jewish in name only, who displaced the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmoneans, descendants of the Maccabees, had won Jewish self-rule a century earlier, a victory still celebrated each year at Chanukah. Herod’s tyrannical, paranoid reign ended in the murder of his own wives and children. He was also an ambitious builder, and many of his grand projects still punctuate the landscape of modern Israel: Masada, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and most prominently his expanded Temple Mount, including the Western Wall.

Aerial View of Herodium Fortress (Source: Menahem Kahana/ AFP )

The fortress looms above the surrounding desert for miles. It was my first time visiting, and while the winding, unfamiliar drive there was a bit stress-inducing, the moment I first glimpsed the site from afar, it took my breath away. Herod demanded a fortress so grand it could be seen from Jerusalem, and the terraformed desert mountain remains a masterful feat of engineering. Efforts are now underway to make the site, located in a politically sensitive area, accessible to the broader public. The evening was the kickoff to an academic conference on Israeli heritage in Judea and Samaria. Present were archaeologists, political figures, and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who was presented with a special award by the Ministry of Heritage. At the entrance, we were greeted by a recreated period marketplace, complete with actors dressed as Roman legionnaires scuffling with Israelite locals, a role which I suppose included the rest of us too. An illuminated theater had been erected inside the massive ancient pool Herod once, inexplicably, managed to fill with water in the middle of the desert. As the stars came out, we sat for an original production titled “Herod vs. Bar Kochba: The Battle for Eternity.”

A sense of the scene (note the looming mound of Herodium on the right)

Bar Kochba was a Jewish guerilla leader who led a three-year revolt against Roman occupation in Judea, seventy years after Rome destroyed the renovated Second Temple, another Herodian project and the catastrophe still mourned each year on the fast of Tisha B’Av. The play follows a young Jewish rebel, his wife, and son, camped out at a Herodium that has by then fallen into disrepair. Recent excavations at the site have in fact uncovered a trove of Bar Kochba-era coins; I was handed a replica of one at the event. As the rebels onstage dig tunnels, ration water, and prepare for battle, they are visited by the ghost of Herod, who still haunts his beloved palace. He mocks their devotion to Jewish sovereignty, a doomed cause, he insists, even a century after his own death, given the strength of Rome. Herod argues for compromise and accommodation – you are all headed towards death (forgive my paraphrase, I didn’t think to record at the time). Herod tells them: “Choose life, choose prosperity.” All that is needed, he suggests, is to submit to Roman rule, pay their taxes, and allow a few of their gods and statues into the Jewish holy places. The rebels are unconvinced. They are willing to die at Roman hands not because they love death, but because they are playing a longer game. “Perhaps it will be a few years, perhaps a thousand,” the mother tells her son, “but one day we will march back into Jerusalem and worship our God.”

Roman Legionary Deigns to Take a Photo With the Israelite Riff-Raff

The play then shifts into an ahistorical debate between Herod and Bar Kochba themselves. Herod, played to perfection by the legendary Israeli actor Shuli Rand, makes the (correct) case that modern Israel is no direct heir to Bar Kochba’s fanatical legacy. “Look around you,” he says. “You’re sitting in a theater. Who brought theater to ancient Israel? Do you love culture? Wine? Good food?” These are not the tastes of single-minded desert warriors. Bar Kochba counters that modern Israelis may indeed enjoy a comfortable life, but when crisis strikes, as it did on October 7th, they will fight to their last breath for their people and their land. Bar Kochba himself left little behind. No children, no followers, nothing approaching the scale of what Herod built. His revolt’s brutal defeat left hundreds of thousands of Jewish civilians dead or enslaved. Rome expelled the Jews from Jerusalem, renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, and rebranded the province itself Syria Palaestina, scrubbing Judaea from the map entirely. But the play’s argument is that the fighting spirit that Bar Kochba drew on persists in the modern state regardless, a key part of its ethos from its founding to today.

Each member of the large audience was given a copy, in Hebrew translation, of Barry Strauss’s excellent new book, Jews vs. Rome. The book supplies more nuance than any play could, making a convincing case that the two-hundred-year Jewish struggle against Rome, a struggle with an outsized influence on both Rabbinic and Christian tradition, cannot be separated from the larger contest between empires playing out at the same time, namely between Rome and Parthia, heir to the Persian empire. No small nation in the Mediterranean basin could survive in that era without aligning with one power or the other, and the Jews knew this as well as anyone. Strauss argues that the revolt against Rome was also a desperate, ultimately futile bid to draw Parthian intervention to the Jewish cause.

The timing felt almost too fitting. That same morning, at the G7 summit in France, Trump had defended a newly signed Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, located more or less where Parthia once stood. The MOU calls for a sixty-day ceasefire, during which the US would release significant funds to Tehran, and involves the Iranians trying to bolt-on an Israeli ceasefire in its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The MOU was met with disappointment, to put it mildly, by many Israelis who had hoped for a more decisive outcome, not to mention concern that it will limit Israel’s existential struggle against Iran’s proxies. President Trump, in an attempt to push the MOU forward, voiced some criticism of recent Israeli military action in Lebanon, adding: “Without the United States there would be no Israel, without me there would be no Israel.” Trump’s claim here is characteristically over-the-top. Yet some 1,900 years after Judea’s doomed insurgencies against Rome, we are reminded once again of the painful necessity, for a small nation, of relying on a great power ally.

However, the United States is no Roman Empire, and as the evening at Herodium testified, Jewish life is flourishing across the Land of Israel and increasingly taking on a confident, nationalistic character. Three years into a war launched by the October 7th massacre, our strategic position is far stronger, our enemies considerably weakened, and the shekel is soaring (much to the frustration of American expats still earning in dollars). Modern Israeli culture has reclaimed figures like Bar Kochba and Shimon Bar Giora, who led the Zealots in the earlier Great Revolt, despite their crushing defeats at Roman hands. They represent a spirit of Jewish agency and independence that still underlies many of Israel’s great military and cultural achievements. Strauss, in his book, quotes Churchill’s line after a 1940 war cabinet meeting: “Nations that go down fighting rise again, but those who surrender tamely are finished.”

It was against this backdrop, both contemporary and ancient, that I especially appreciated Ambassador Huckabee’s remarks when he accepted his award. He spoke twice that night, once in a smaller, filmed setting that has since been clipped and mocked by Tucker Carlson and others with little sense of the context in which it was deliveed. But in his similar, full remarks before an audience of more than a thousand, Huckabee noted that the United States is approaching the 250th anniversary of its independence this July 4th, a milestone that might seem almost laughable set against 3,800 years of Jewish history in this land. “To you, we’re mere children,” he said. “You’ve been around a lot longer, and your history is not only your history, but I want to say this, and I hope you understand, your history is also our history.” He went on: “Without you and your history, and your preserving God’s purpose and God’s law, there would never be Western civilization. There would never be an America, because America was founded on the principles that were established right here in this land all those many thousands of years ago.” Many read Huckabee’s words as a direct answer to Trump’s comments earlier that day. His message was that Israel owes real gratitude to its current great power patron, the United States. But the United States, rooted as it is in biblical values, is itself a kind of outgrowth of the Jewish struggle against Rome that played out nineteen centuries ago. That struggle was the crucible from which both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity were born.

In making this case, Huckabee charts a third way, distinct from the two offered onstage that night. It is not Herod’s path, accommodation purchased through submission and the gradual erosion of what makes a people distinct. Nor is it pure Bar Kochba – righteous rebellion that goes down fighting, in flames. Huckabee’s third way is partnership felt as kinship, a great power and a small nation bound not merely by shared interest but by shared inheritance. America’s strength flows from values Israel gave the world long before America existed to receive them. It is a relationship that asks Israel to feel gratitude without shame, and asks America to remember that the debt runs both ways. Driving home that night, I watched Herodium recede in the rearview mirror, its massive dome holding the dark a little longer than everything around it before finally sinking under the horizon. Herod built it to be seen from Jerusalem. Two thousand years later, it is still a fixed point in an old argument about what is needed for a nation, and the set of ideas it embodies, to fulfill its destiny.

Also published on Substack, if you’re new to my work please considering subscribing!

Amos: The Genius of Prophetic Rhetoric

On By SarahIn Amos, Biblical Geography, Book Review, Crisis, Hebrew, Israel, Leadership, Nationalism, October 7, Poetry, Politics, Prophecy, Religion, Review, Sukkot, ZionismLeave a comment

One of our family’s favorite songs to play in the car here in Israel is a feel-good anthem called “Al Tira Yisrael,” (“Have No Fear, Israel”). The version we listen to, by Israeli singer Itay Levi, is meant to inspire confidence during the difficult period following October 7. Its refrain includes a quote from the Biblical Book of Amos: “Do not fear Israel, do not be afraid, / For are you not a young lion?/ And if a lion roars—who won’t be afraid?/ Who won’t be afraid?”

The Roaring Lion of Tel Hai (Public Domain)

The sentiment of Israel roaring like a lion reached its pinnacle during the “Sha’agat HaAri” (“Lion’s Roar”) joint US–Israeli campaign against Iran, which took place between Purim and Pesach this year. This, too, draws on Amos and suggests continuity with the “Rising Lion” campaign that took place against Iran one year ago in June. Yet a closer reading of Amos reveals a more complex context for the line, “If a lion roars, who will not be afraid?” One might even ask whether its fear is meant for our enemies or for our own society.

Amos was a Judean shepherd and farmer living in the eighth century bce in a place called Tekoa, located on the edge of the desert southeast of Jerusalem. Despite living in a time of relative tranquility, he is called upon by G-d to warn the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, largely residing in Samaria, to stop their corrupt behavior or face destruction. Amos prophesies using rich and vivid literary language. The lion is one recurring motif among many that the prophet employs to stunning and devastating effect.

Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom, a well-known Tanach teacher based in Los Angeles, authored a wonderful volume entitled Amos: The Genius of Prophetic Rhetoric published by Maggid Books, an imprint of Koren Publishers in Jerusalem. The book is part of a series of scholarly volumes that address specific Biblical books. Each book is designed to be read on its own but also serves as a learning supplement. It offers deep, line-by-line analysis of a book’s language that is sensitive to the history of traditional interpretation, as well as to its historical and archaeological context, and to a peshat-based “close reading” of the text itself. In this spirit, Rabbi Etshalom’s Amos marries rabbinic interpretation with scholarly analysis, while demonstrating an unyielding dedication to making sense of Amos’s brilliant but dense and sometimes elusive prophetic rhetoric.

For the full review see the Summer 2026 Issue of Jewish Action Magazine

Out of the Sky

On By SarahIn Aliyah, Book Review, Crisis, Diaspora, Feminism, Gender, Hebrew, Heroism, Holocaust, Israel, Jewish Identity, Leadership, Nationalism, Religion, Review, Tragedy, War, Western Civilization, ZionismLeave a comment

“To be a Zionist in 1944, or indeed at any point before the state of Israel is created, requires tremendous imagination, which is why the movement draws mainly the literary and the desperate.”

This review was published in this week’s Jewish Journal

Hannah Senesh occupies a unique place in Israeli history and memory. Only 19 years old on the eve of World War II, she left her hometown of Budapest to build the land of Israel with her young Zionist peers. At 23, she made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe. The mission ultimately failed in its stated purpose and resulted in Senesh’s execution. But it left the fledgling Jewish State with a national hero, whose poetry and diary entries still reverberate today. Senesh wasn’t alone, she was one among a small group of Jewish members of the yishuv who donned British army uniforms in an implausible bid to try to save Jewish lives from the German killing machine, often their own families included. A few of these figures, such as Enzo Sereni and Haviva Reik, also entered the national consciousness, with streets and settlements named in their honor. Others are less well-known. For a story that is this iconic, one would imagine that its details would be more or less widely understood. Yet as Matti Friedman demonstrates in his riveting new book “Out of the Sky,” one of Israel’s greatest legends is also riddled with mysteries and open questions.

The heroic operation was the result of a collaboration between the fledgling Jewish army, the Haganah and British intelligence. The idea, at least as the British understood it, was for a group of Jewish men and women, almost all of them recent refugees from Europe, to join the British army and leverage their skill in their native languages in order to assist British POWs and local resistance fighters behind enemy lines. On the Jewish end, motivations were more multifaceted. The Jewish conscripts sought British military training, which would help them when the time came for their own inevitable war of independence. Even more so, they desperately wanted to try to help the Jewish communities of Europe in some way. A total of 250 men and women were recruited to take part in this unusual mission, but only 37 of them completed the training. Of this number, 12 were captured and seven did not make it home.

Friedman lays out the extent to which this improbable mission, rooted in the loftiest ideals, never really had a chance of succeeding. Firstly, by the time it took place in 1944, most Jews in Europe had already been murdered. No allied powers, including the British commanders overseeing this secret mission, seemed to prioritize saving their lives. Even the safety of the Jewish volunteers was not viewed as urgent. Enzo Sereni, the brilliant Italian Labor Zionist and polymath, who Ben-Gurion tried to prevent from jumping because “there wasn’t another man like him,” was carelessly dropped atop a German army installation in Northern Italy.  As Friedman notes in an interesting aside, the Mossad unit operating out of Istanbul at the time had been infiltrated by German double agents, who likely knew about the parachutists’ missions before they even landed.

A visitor could walk through the entire Hannah Senesh House in Sdot Yam — a beautifully renovated museum in the kibbutz where she lived for two years before setting out on her perilous mission — without seeing any mention of a seemingly important fact: that her mission was doomed from the start. Yet Friedman’s aim is not to diminish Senesh’s extraordinary bravery, or that of her fellow operatives. Rather, he seeks to understand their courage in a new light.

In recent years, Friedman has become one of the most compelling English-language chroniclers of Israeli history and society. What distinguishes his work — whether he is examining the brilliant letters of a young Israeli soldier on a Lebanese outpost or recounting Leonard Cohen’s sojourn in Israel after the Yom Kippur War — is his tendency to frame Israel’s turbulent history through a literary lens. While the canon of modern Hebrew wartime literature remains relatively sparse — perhaps because most writers keep their distance from the battlefield — Israel has never lacked for fighters with poetic souls in the state’s early years or today.

Throughout the book, Friedman explores the intellectual worlds of his unusually thoughtful protagonists, suggesting that “if they showed up at a military recruiting office now, they’d probably be turned away.” Senesh, the daughter of a well-known Hungarian-Jewish playwright, dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps and wrote poems of startling quality as early as age 15. Sereni held a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rome. Friedman recounts how, in addition to having already written a novel and novella, he dreamed of writing a great Italian novel which would depict the conflicts and controversies of his time through the lens of his own Jewish family.

In this sense both Senesh and Sereni follow in the path of other great Zionist leaders, like Herzl and Jabotinsky, who began their careers as journalists and writers of fiction, eventually putting aside their universalistic literary ambitions for the more particularistic cause of Jewish sovereignty. Friedman makes the terrific observation that this is no coincidence: “To be a Zionist in 1944, or indeed at any point before the state of Israel is created, requires tremendous imagination, which is why the movement draws mainly the literary and the desperate.”

Part of the book’s premise is that the exquisite literary sensibilities of these proto-Israeli heroes helps explain why they made the jump. Friedman writes: “The parachutists aren’t commandos. They’re storytellers. They’ve been sent to write, with their lives, a Zionist story about the war – a story that will lead others not to despair but to action.” Senesh’s military achievements may have been miniscule – hardly any time passed from the beginning of her mission until her execution in a Hungarian prison, only three months before liberation.

Yet we remember Senesh because of her literary achievements: among them the diary she wrote vividly portraying her transition from a precocious, assimilated 13-year-old girl into a fervent Zionist activist. At every major juncture in her short life Senesh seemed to find the time to quickly craft a phenomenal poem. She handed her fellow fighter “blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame” right before entering occupied Hungary. Shortly before her execution she managed to pen a short lyric poem: “I gambled on what mattered most/The dice were cast. I lost.” While Senesh failed in saving other Jews, and even herself, she succeeded in her larger objective. As Friedman summarizes it: “The mission isn’t military, it’s literary, and she’s the best writer.”

In writing “Out of the Sky” — a book equally about a remarkable episode in history as it is the act of crafting and telling stories — Friedman certainly crafts his own. While many fascinating and heretofore little-known stories about Senesh and her fellow parachuters make it into the book, others do not. Friedman leans toward a portrait of Senesh as a clever, cosmopolitan European. He reminds us of her youth and her theatrical family. In her precocious diary entries, Zionism feels like a role she has chosen to play. He clearly admires her heroism but does not exaggerate it. Yet alternative accounts remain.

In his introduction to the first edition of Senesh’s collected writings, Abba Eban wrote, “all the definitions of giant courage come together in Senesh’s life.” Joel Palgi, another parachutist who followed a similar path to Senesh but inexplicably managed to survive, wrote about her in his memoirs as a force of nature, the undisputed leader of their group, fiercely admired by fellow resistance comrades as she transformed from a poet into a fighter. Even the Gestapo, in Palgi’s telling, were in awe of Senesh. He describes the sadistic prison warden who used to visit Senesh’s cell every day to argue about politics. Senesh’s mother Katherine, in her own memoir, describes the mesmerizing power Senesh held over guards and fellow prisoners alike. Children gravitated toward her, fellow prisoners drew strength from Senesh’s whispered encouragement, her Zionist education campaign, and her ingenious secret broadcasts from the window of her cell. One SS guard told Senesh, “I’ve never known a woman as brave as you.”

“Out of the Sky” does not contradict these remarkable testimonies, which contain a whiff of hagiography, though surely have some grounding in truth. It’s not really a book about superheroes, unusual people with uniquely phenomenal qualities who changed the course of history. Rather, it’s a book about regular people, highly intelligent and talented to be sure, who met the challenges of their age with bravery and foresight.  What distinguished them as heroes was that they understood, both in their lives and their deaths, they could contribute to the writing of a story much larger than themselves.

For the original article see this week’s Jewish Journal

Children of the Book

On By SarahIn Book Review, Children, Children's Literature, Classics, Corona, Covid-19, Crisis, Eishet Chayil, Family, Feminism, Gender, Hebrew, Israel, Jewish Holidays, Jewish Identity, Marriage, Memoir, Motherhood, Parenting, Religion, Western CivilizationLeave a comment

“Books, even works of genius, are not incandescent orbs that exist independently in some kind of ether. For books to have enduring value, they must be read by people. For those readers to exist, they must be born and raised.”

Was a pleasure to review Ilana Kurshan’s fantastic new book for the Summer issue of Tradition, now available online.

Between Heroism and Grief: One Day in October

On By SarahIn Book Review, Crisis, Ethics, Grief, Hebrew, Heroism, Israel, Jewish Identity, Leadership, Morality, Nationalism, October 7, Politics, Redemption, Religion, Review, Simchat Torah, Tragedy, ZionismLeave a comment

It was an honor to review Koren Press’s outstanding new book One Day in October for the Jerusalem Post Magazine this past week. While the book is not necessarily “literary” in nature, it is brilliantly written and edited, and moved me in a way that few books have. This piece is actually an abbreviated version of a longer review essay that will hopefully appear in the Jerusalem Report in the coming weeks. Grateful to be part of this “עם של אריות,” “nation of lions,” whose incredible bravery continues to exhibit itself each and every day.

A New Read on Female Modesty

On By SarahIn Book Review, Ethics, Feminism, Gender, Modesty, Morality, Motherhood2 Comments

It was an honor to review Rabbi Anthony Manning and Bracha Poliakoff’s groundbreaking new book for the wonderful Winter issue of Tradition Journal. This review was written before October 7 and before the world as we know it changed. In truth discussions of dress codes and hair coverings feel very distant right now, as we fight a war for our survival and we mourn the loss of precious soldiers nearly every day. Yet it’s interesting to note that the primary Biblical source for Tzniut actually comes from the battlefield, from the requirement that Jewish soldiers maintain a sense of holiness and dignity in their encampment. This requirement filters through to the soldiers of Tzahal today, where their remarkable integrity, spirit and faith distinguish them from every other army in the world. Please enjoy the review which has been released from the paywall courtesy of Tradition Journal.

Review: My Quarrel With Hersh Rasseyner by Chaim Grade

On By SarahIn Book Review, Hassidut, Holocaust, Jewish Identity, Religion, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Translated by Ruth Wisse

Published by The Tikvah Fund and Toby Press

The year is 1948. Two Holocaust survivors run into each other on a Paris subway. Though each had assumed the other was killed in the Holocaust, they waste little time exchanging questions about wartime experiences or polite inquiries about the well-being of family and friends. Instead, the two fall back into an argument they had begun many years before, in the period preceding World War II. Both are graduates of the Novardok yeshiva in Lithuania, and their argument is intellectual, philosophical, and also deeply personal. They debate the question of how a Jew should relate to the world around them. One believes the world outside of Judaism is rich with insight and enlightenment. The other maintains that the Torah is the only source of meaning in this life, and all other endeavors amount to nothing but vanity and self-destruction. 

For the full review of this wonderful new translation of a classic Yiddish story see the excellent new issue of Lubavitch International Magazine.

Living Antiquities: Ozick, Great Books & Judaism

On By SarahIn Archaeology, Book Review, Classics, Diaspora, Jewish Identity, Religion, Western CivilizationLeave a comment

A recent conversation over at Tradition Magazine discusses the potential relationship (or lack thereof) between “Great Books” and Judaism. I weighed in with the help of one particularly great book, Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick. Please read the full essay here.

An excerpt: “There are many wonderful cases to be made for the contributions of great books to our culture, our civilization, and to ourselves. But on a common-sense level, Menand is right. While people who love literature (myself included) can make a compelling case for why these texts enrich our lives, we cannot generalize that those who read great literature are on the whole better people than those who are interested in other matters. Countless well-known authors and literature scholars have been involved in every kind of sordid affair imaginable. Indeed, whenever a new anti-Semitic tinged crusade against the Jewish State pops up, literature departments are inevitably leading the charge. Menand writes that “knowledge is a tool, not a state of being.” To me there is no doubt that the experience of reading Cervantes or Jane Austen can generate profound insights into the complexity of human experience, and morally sensitive writers like George Eliot or Leo Tolstoy create a powerful case for virtue. Yet clearly something else is necessary in order to lay the foundations of a moral life in practice.”

For more on that “something else,” see my latest in Tradition.

Covid-19 and J.K. Rowling’s The Ickabog

On By SarahIn Book Review, Children's Literature, Corona, Covid-19, Crisis, Hanukkah, Israel, Jerusalem, Leadership, Morality, Politics, Pop CultureLeave a comment

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic last April, when celebrities around the world were lecturing us via tweet to stay home and wear a mask, British novelist J. K. Rowling took a different approach. As kids were forced to forego school and interactions with friends, she published a new children’s book and released it in free installments for families stuck at home. The novel, The Ickabog, was published in full this past Thanksgiving. Proceeds from sales of the book are donated to communities hurt most by COVID-19.

Rowling has said that the Ickabog story first came to her years ago, when her own children were young. She wrote the book during the period in which she wrote the Harry Potter books, and claims to have made no serious modifications since that time. Yet intentionally or not, The Ickabog may be the most serious literary indictment of the mass response to the COVID-19 epidemic published to date.

The cover of JK Rowling’s The Ickabog. This may be a stretch but note the corona (Latin: crown) artfully woven into the book logo.

I bought the book as a gift for my Harry Potter-loving 9-year-old, and first picked it up on the Sabbath after Hannukah. My family had just returned from Jerusalem, where the lack of tourists and the still-considerable virus restrictions cast a pallor on this normally magical time of year. After months of closures, the street vendors of Jaffa and Ben Yehudah streets finally had their Judaica and souvenirs proudly on display, albeit with few takers. Seemingly half of the usually bustling restaurants were temporarily shuttered or closed for good. I wasn’t in the mood to read more of the endless news about the pandemic, so I turned to my son’s Rowling book looking for a light fantasy escape.

Read the full essay at First Things

When Heidi Met Shimen, or, Why Real Religion Endures

On By SarahIn Aliyah, Book Review, Hassidut, Hebrew, Holocaust, Israel, Jewish Identity, Language, Morality, Religion, Review, Western Civilization, ZionismLeave a comment

A review of Judaism Straight up by Moshe Koppel

Several years ago, a blog called Judaism Without Apologies began to circulate on social media. The blog began by juxtaposing two Jewish characters’ lives and ideals: Shimen, a Gerer Hasid of sorts and Holocaust survivor living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Heidi, a cosmopolitan Princeton graduate who thinks of herself as a citizen of the world.

A photograph by George Kalinsky of my own Polish Holocaust survivor grandfather at the Siyum HaShas in 1990. I imagine Shimen having a similar intense, independent-minded look.


The series was narrated by the American Israeli computer scientist Moshe Koppel, who had attended Shimen’s Gerer shtiebel in his youth. After obtaining a PhD in mathematics, Koppel spent a year at Prince- ton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where he met the original Heidi, the first of many he would encounter in the years to come. Koppel’s blog may have been rooted in comic sociology, but it quickly morphed into a serious discussion of moral philosophy, game theory, cultural anthropology, the nature of language, and ultimately an argument about the future of Judaism itself. Despite its rather niche appeal, the blog’s unique fusion of a no-holds-barred attitude with serious erudition attracted some diehard fans. Koppel has just published an expanded book-length version, which presents a cleaned-up and even more compelling defense of the old-fashioned Judaism Koppel imbibed in the shtiebel.

Shimen, a real-life acquaintance of Koppel (Heidi is a composite), is at the heart of the book. He survived the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz, but his wife and two precious children did not. After the war, Shimen picked up a handgun and collected Jewish children who had been hidden by Polish families and returned them to their communities. Elie Wiesel, who prayed in Shimen’s Gerer shtiebel from time to time, once told a story about celebrating Rosh Hashanah in Auschwitz without wine. An inmate announced, “we’ll take out tin cups and fill them with tears. And that is how we’ll make our kiddush . . . heard before God.” That, apparently, was Shimen. Koppel writes of Polish Hasidic Holocaust survivors like him: 

[They] were intense, they were angry, they could be funny in a biting sort of way. . . . But one thing they had no patience for was high-minded pieties. They despised pomposity and self-righteousness. Their devotion to Yiddishkeit, old-fashioned Judaism, as a way of life, and to the Jews as a people, were as natural and instinctive as drawing breath.

To read the full review see the wonderful new issue of Jewish Review of Books.