When Dvora Hacohen, professor and historian of modern Jewish history at Bar Ilan University in Israel, was looking for an inclusive biography of Henrietta Szold, she was unable to find one. She was surprised because Szold was considered the most famous...

Comic books, once disparaged as a waste of precious childhood time and even described as a corrupting influence on kids, have come into their own.  Consider that there are three biographies of Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee and that movies based...

In 1902, meat packers increased the price of kosher meat, and religious immigrant Jewish women on the Lower East Side of New York City were having none of it. Thousands took to the streets in sometimes bloody protest, and their efforts...

First, full disclosure:  I have been an unabashed admirer of the acclaimed novelist Philip Roth throughout my long career at the Jewish Light.  Roth, the tormented genius of American Jewish letters, who earned every major literary award except for the...

Shabtai Shavit was the top man at Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, from 1989 to 1996, so he knows lots of state secrets. He shares many of them, to the extent he can, with readers in a memoir that is at times absolutely fascinating and at other times absolutely...

This, Daniel Silva’s latest in his series featuring Israeli intelligence protagonist/hero/genius Gabriel Allon, is not at all like the others. Defending Israel from terrorists isn’t Silva’s focus in “The Order.”Uncovering the origins of anti-Semitism...

The trailblazing Bella Abzug – lawyer, social activist, leader in the women’s movement, congresswoman – is the subject of a riveting new biography, “Battling Bella: The Protest Politics of Bella Abzug,” by Leandra Ruth Zarnow, an assistant professor...

Looking for some good company to beat the blahs of isolation, social distancing and videoconferencing? How about a welcome return of St. Louis lawyer and veteran supersleuth Rachel Gold, the brilliant and engaging character at the heart of a series of...

David Ben-Gurion, known as the founder of the State of Israel, has been the subject of many books. His latest biographer is Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, author and journalist who is associated with Israel’s New Historians, a group challenging many...

Among the nations of the world, the State of Israel, which turned 71 on May 14 (the fifth of Iyar), is both a relative newcomer and the successor to Jewish self-rule that goes back over 4,000 years. In 1948, when David Ben-Gurion was serving as the first prime...

The publication of “Shadow Strike” by Yaakov Katz, editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, could not be more timely as he pulls back the layers of Israel’s daring and successful military and intelligence operations. For example, on Sept. 6, 2007,...

The most recent biography in Yale University’s Jewish Lives series is “Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures,”written by Adina Hoffman, an award-winning essayist and biographer and former film critic for the American Prospect and the Jerusalem...