Book review

'Returning': Exploring assimilation and the search for Jewish belonging - review

A multigenerational story of assimilation and the search for Jewish belonging.

Mississippi River steamboats at New Orleans, 1853.
Reading a torah scroll

'The Sacrificial Service': Leviticus has been mistranslated for centuries - review

Rabbi Danny Tropper, founder of Gesher.

'Agents of Change': American Jews and the transformation of Israeli Judaism - review

Title page of first edition of the Zohar, Mantua, 1558. (Photos: Wikimedia Commons)

'The Wisdom of Truth': Reaching the attic with a ladder to the Zohar - review


'Yoko: A Biography': Have we underestimated Yoko Ono all along? - review

As more of her albums have been released and the number of art exhibitions has mounted, however, Ono has increasingly been recognized for what one critic called “the breadth, charm, and brilliance."

 JOHN AND Yoko on their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam, March 1969

'Extreme Trauma': Analyzing the horrors and heroism of October 7 - review

In the hands of the right readers, Extreme Trauma can help ensure that the truth of what happened on Oct. 7 is neither distorted nor forgotten.

 FORMER HOSTAGE Noa Argamani attends an emergency conference on the medical condition of Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, in 2024.

'On Democracies and Death Cults': Douglas Murray lauds Israel’s youth - review

On Democracies and Death Cults sets out Douglas Murray’s clear-eyed, reasoned, and deeply researched view of the pogrom committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023

 CALLING FOR the release of Israelis still in Hamas captivity, at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square in April 2025.

'Sons and Daughters': The last great Yiddish novel now available in English - review

An English translation by Rose Waldman of Chaim Grade’s final, unfinished work has been published.

 JEWISH WEDDING in a Russian shtetl, complete with klezmer band; painting by Isaak Asknaziy, 1893.

'The Right to Happiness': Moving fiction about Holocaust survivors - review

While they are firmly grounded in the hearts and souls of the survivors and their families, these tales tell a universal story of love and loss that will appeal to any reader.

 A MEMORIAL to Janusz Korczak and the orphans he stayed with until their very last moments, created by Boris Saktsier, at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem.

'Rabbinic Scholarship': How the Talmud Yerushalmi was made - review

This book is a deeply scholarly and ambitious work that sheds new light on the Talmud Yerushalmi and its place within the intellectual world of late antiquity.

 An illustrative image of someone reading the Talmud.

'The Defeat of Evil': A warning for constant vigilance against a resurgent evil within - review

The Defeat of Evil ends with this somber warning: “Even in victory, we must remember: No triumph is ever complete or permanent. Safeguarding our values demands constant vigilance.”

 Israelis are seen protesting judicial reform, in Tel Aviv.

'The Human Scale': Israel-based FBI mystery is a page-turner - review

The Human Scale is a superb contemporary political thriller that goes well beyond simply keeping the reader enthralled with a succession of unexpected developments, page after page.

An FBI vehicle

'The Art of the Music Critic': Music through a former ‘Jerusalem Post’ critic's eyes - review

The Art of the Music Critic is an incisive and illuminating compendium of an expansive stretch of our musical timeline, presented in an invitingly user-friendly form.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

'Songs for the Brokenhearted': A mosaic of Israeli society - review

This cast of characters and their stories offer an authentic mosaic of the people who make up Israeli society, portraying the tensions, the long history, and the unresolved traumas.

 Jews from Yemen are seen heading to Israel during Operation Magic Carpet.