Books

'Everything God Does Is Good'

... or is it? Some essays put the matter up for debate

By:

SPEAKING VOLUMES Just when the brouhaha over the New Atheism cooled down a touch, along comes The God Question , which would have been a useful tool during the cultural wars that broke out during that protracted spat. No matter. The book still makes for good reading, especially for those who get their kicks from intellectual pursuits. It also provides...

Books

'Good for Us'

By:

Robert Leiter

If Jews in the tri-state area were, for many years, only vaguely aware of the term "lone soldier," its meaning was driven home to them heartbreakingly in 2006, with the start of the Second Lebanon War and the brave story of Michael Levin, a native of the Philadelphia suburbs. Lone soldiers are those who make aliyah from all over the...

Books

'No Life Left' Here?

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES Visiting Poland these days is a bracing, stimulating, often puzzling, repeatedly maddening and, in the end, depressing and tragic experience for Jews. In fact, I recall a wintry Shabbat spent in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow (think Schindler's List ), that perfectly summed up the warring spirits that have always seemed to permeate such visits. A...

Books

Head East, My Friend

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES Over the course of the last 25 years or so, whenever people would rave inordinately about Paris as the most beautiful and romantic city in the world, I would always say, "Give me Prague or Budapest any time." I even touted these cities in the heyday of the Soviet bloc, in the late 1980s in particular, when I...

Books

Love Is ...

Finally getting published?

By:

Robert Leiter

Several months ago, when I discussed the work of the little-known German writer, Grete Weil, I posed certain questions and discussed conundrums surrounding the fickle nature of reputation in the arts. Why is it, I wondered, that certain writers achieve fame far out of proportion to the reality of their talent -- and that such reputations persist, despite the evident...