Editor

"For many years I had lived without religion. But I could not have lived without the possibility of religion,” Leon Wieseltier writes in “Kaddish.”

The one thing that most reviewers of E.L Doctorow’s new novel City of God (Random House) seem to agree on is that it’s an ambitious work. It’s an unusual, non-linear, non-smooth, rambling postmodern novel that takes on themes of God, science, religion, love, war, popular music, bird watching and movies; it’s also a novel about writing. Not always easy to follow, its several narrative lines and multiple speakers shift abruptly, and those readers who like their novels to have beginnings, middles and ends might find it difficult.

Nobody remembers whether the Torah has ever won a book award before.
But this year’s National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction goes to “Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary,” edited by David Lieber and Jules Harlow (Jewish Publication Society). It’s the Conservative movement’s new volume of the Torah text and commentary, the first new edition published in 70 years.

The advent of the Sabbath has been strikingly noted in the works of Hayim Nahman Bialik, the Israeli poet Zelda, Tillie Olsen and Philip Roth too. For many Jews, a world of memories is enfolded in the familiar aroma of roast chicken or the slow dancing flames of Sabbath candles. In her new book, “The Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day” (Harmony), award-winning writer Francine Klagsbrun explores in depth the images and symbols of the seventh day to describe its complex religious, philosophical and mystical underpinnings.

Has a Russian-language newspaper in America known for its assertive stand for a Russian-American Jewish community independent of influence back home fallen under the sway of Moscow?Some in the Russian-speaking world are asking this question six weeks after the Russian Forward, the well-regarded weekly newspaper, was sold to local businessmen and Jewish organizational leaders known collectively as the Mitzvah Media Group.While the founders of Mitzvah Media — Dr. Igor Branovan, Dr.

Does vocal support for Israel give public figures a pass on just about anything else they say?

In Haiti, the Other World is this one. Everywhere in the night are the dead — the gede — and their spirits.

In the wreckage of the earthquake, in that heavily Christian-Voodoo nation surely some whispered Psalms, words born in Hebrew, now shared, a crying from “out of the depths.” It is an island punished by nature but not God forsaken. Many Haitians believe that even before the rescuers arrived, God was with the mourners on the mattresses in the dirt, and on the pieces of cardboard that pass for mattresses.

The race to establish a national Hebrew charter schools movement has officially begun, igniting a growing, and fierce, debate about the vision and purpose of schools that could potentially revolutionize the American Jewish education landscape.

On the occasion of the 137th birthday of the man who already early on in his lifetime was bestowed with the title the National Hebrew Poet, a look at how his views changed toward America after visiting in 1926.

Last week, after years of contemplating it but being stymied by various logistical challenges, I finally made it, with my two daughters in tow, to Limmud NY.

On the ride there Friday, as our bus ascended the curving mountain road to the Catskills hotel where this Jewish learning festival/conference would be held, 3-year-old Sophie sent me into a fit of soul-searching that would throw me off for the entire weekend.