Andrew Silow-Carroll

A Yiddish ad for Eli Gilman's Newark dental practice opens with “Even Santa Claus looks good with nice teeth,” from Forverts, Dec. 25, 1924. (Jordan Chad/Courtesy)

Back in the day, Yiddish-speaking Jews had themselves a merry ‘nitl’ Christmas

December 16, 2025 at 11:55 a.m.

What emerges in “Christmas in the Yiddish Tradition” is not a sentimental argument for reviving a lost holiday, nor a polemic against drawing firm boundaries between Us and Them. It’s...

Children hold hands around a Christmas tree in a New York City school, ca. 1900. (The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library; JTA photo illustration by Grace Yagel/Courtesy)

When Jews really did wage a ‘war on Christmas’

November 21, 2025 at 1:32 p.m.

In 1906, tens of thousands of Jewish parents in New York’s Lower East Side and Brooklyn kept their children home from school in an attempt to boycott the Christmas assemblies...

Zohran K. Mamdani, campaigning for New York City mayor, speaks during the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice's Mazals Gala, Sept. 10, 2025. (John Lamparski/Getty Images/Courtesy)

Progressive Jewish groups say ADL’s ‘Mamdani Monitor’ is ‘Islamophobic and racist’

November 13, 2025 at 1:03 p.m.

The groups said they intend to work with Mamdani, a Muslim and outspoken critic of Israel, in his pledge to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin speaks at a peace rally in Tel Aviv, Nov. 4, 1995. He was shot and killed by a Jewish extremist shortly after leaving the stage. (Israel Press and Photo Agency/Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel/Courtesy)

Yitzhak Rabin was killed 30 years ago. Has the Jewish world forgotten?

November 4, 2025 at 1:05 p.m.

For most young adults, Rabin’s assassination is something they learned about in history class, at a day school assembly or from their parents.

A makeshift memorial for the 11 victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Oct. 31, 2018. (Dmitry Brant/Wikimedia Commons/Courtesy)

Why a historian thinks Jews are living through a ‘high tide’ of American antisemitism

September 29, 2025 at 2:45 p.m.

Puncturing the largely flattering story of an America that created the conditions for Jews to flourish as never before, the book shows, she writes, “how powerfully antisemitism has coursed throughout...

The last laugh? Comedian Alex Edelman, left, and author Shalom Auslander shared the stage at "Spoiler," a story festival marking the inaugural semester of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, Sept. 7, 2025. (Alex S. K. Brown/Courtesy)

Alex Edelman and fans of ‘Long Story Short’ may disagree, but a new book says Jewish humor is dying

September 24, 2025 at 12:28 p.m.

So maybe the last Jewish joke isn’t the last after all. Maybe it’s just the latest retelling of an old story — ours — one that keeps finding ways to...

Robert Jay Lifton in a 2009 documentary based on his book, "The Nazi Doctors." (Wolfgang Richter/National Center for Jewish Film/Courtesy)

Robert Jay Lifton, pioneering scholar of Nazi doctors and Jewish memory, dies at 99

September 22, 2025 at 3:11 p.m.

Lifton’s writings bridged psychiatry, history and Jewish thought. He investigated how survivors of Hiroshima, Vietnam veterans and Holocaust survivors alike wrestled with trauma and memory. His concept of “survivor guilt”...

In "Boy from the North Country," Sam Sussman writes about his mother's real-life romance with Bob Dylan. (Penguin Random House; author photo by Ben Kaplan/Courtesy)

Sam Sussman’s novel is about his Jewish mom and the teasing possibility that Bob Dylan is his dad

September 16, 2025 at 11:29 a.m.

Sam Sussman’s debut novel, “Boy from the North Country,” revolves around a mystery: Was Bob Dylan, the singer and Nobel laureate, the narrator’s father?

In "Jew vs. Jew," Samuel Freedman showed a community not so much assimilating away but imploding from within. (Author photo Gabriela Bhaskar/Courtesy)

25 years ago, he wrote the book on ‘Jew vs. Jew.’ Now Samuel Freedman is seeing new and deeper divisions.

September 11, 2025 at 1:56 p.m.

The Gaza war has created “an unprecedented divide within American Jewry” over Zionism itself, Freedman said, discussing the book’s 25th anniversary.

Sasha Vasilyuk’s novel, "Your Presence Is Mandatory," was inspired by the story of her grandfather, right, a Soviet World War II soldier who never talked about the war. (Christopher Michel; Sasha Vasilyuk/Courtesy)

Her Jewish grandfather’s shame inspired a prize-winning novel

August 28, 2025 at 8:44 a.m.

Sasha Vasilyuk's debut novel, “Your Presence Is Mandatory,” won the $100,000 prize for a story inspired by her father’s father, a Jewish soldier in the Red Army who was captured...

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