The Sunni jihadist organization Islamic State appears to have lost some of its momentum. It has not made any meaningful territorial gains in Iraq since last year, when it threatened Baghdad, the capital, and captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in a lightning offensive that reverberated across the Middle East. More to the point, Islamic […]
Queen Isabella’s legacy is nothing if not checkered. Consider her virtues and failings: She paved the way for the unification of Spain after having subdued the last remaining Islamic kingdom in the country. She launched the Spanish Inquisition and drove Jews and Muslims out of Spain. She sponsored Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World, […]
Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Hebrew-language film, Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, leaves a viewer puzzled and angry. An intense court room drama playing out over a five-year period, it’s a scathing critique of the outmoded divorce system in contemporary Israel. Through the main character, an emotionally abused woman who yearns for freedom, the directors […]
They’re gems of the colonial period in Cuba, quaint towns founded and developed by French and Spanish explorers from the 16th century onward. Cienfuegos and Trinidad, about an hour away from each other in southern Cuba, are usually overlooked by many of the Canadian and European travellers who typically descend on this island nation during […]
Turkey’s Islamist leadership, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, seems intent on burning its bridges with Israel, once a valued ally. In recent months, the pair have stepped up their diatribes against Israel so as to burnish their anti-Israel credentials and consolidate Turkey’s standing and status in the Muslim world. […]
Since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the Shebaa Farms sector of the Golan Heights has turned into a dangerous flashpoint of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the past 15 years, armed clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have erupted periodically. Last month, in the most serious incident in years, two Israeli […]
Lev Golinkin’s bracing memoir of boyhood in the Soviet Union and manhood in the United States, A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka (Doubleday), bears a striking resemblance to Gary Shtenyngart’s Little Failure, which I read last year. Like so many Soviet Jews born in the Soviet Union, the two authors share common […]
If you’re like me, you adore New York City. It’s a wonderful town, as the song goes. New York has it all — great neighborhoods, world-class museums, theaters, restaurants and cafes, and a grand assortment of sylvan parks, the finest of which is Central Park. Unless you’ve been there many times and know the city […]
It was called the “captain of death.” Tuberculosis, until a few decades ago, had killed one in seven people who had ever lived on the planet, and there was no cure in sight. Popularly known as consumption, it ravaged the United States in 19th century, spreading fear, uncertainty and mass deaths. The effort to contain […]
Katka Reszke is a member of Poland’s “unexpected” generation — a Catholic Pole who converted to Judaism before discovering she was halachically Jewish. After the fall of communism in 1989, thousands of Poles who had been brought up as Christians learned that one or several of their ancestors had been Jewish. This process unfolded as […]