Gershom Gorenberg My new article on the right’s difficulties with the army is up at The American Prospect: Driving through the West Bank recently, I picked up two hitchhikers. Both wore the long, thick sidelocks and extra-large skullcaps that have become the mark of young men on the religious right, especially among settlers. Since they [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My new column is up at Moment Magazine: My son and I found the story one Shabbat when he was home from the army. We slipped out of morning services a bit early to study Vayikra Rabba, an ancient collection of midrash. If I hadn’t decided to make aliyah before he was born, [...]

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Haim Watzman “Write a short descriptive passage,” suggested the red-headed creative writing teacher who sat uncomfortably at the head of the table. We eight acolytes bent our heads submissively, pondered, and began to write. We sat at a long narrow table, in a long narrow room, in the Haim Hazaz Writers’ House in Jerusalem’s Old [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My new piece on South Jerusalem’s unofficial, non-establishment, do-it-yourself holy place is now up at the Hadassah Magazine site: On the far side of the circle from me, women sang, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem,” in a soft, melancholy melody. There were a couple of hundred silhouettes in the circle—the women mostly [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My new piece on the arrest of alleged terrorist Yaakov Teitel and its context is up at The American Prospect: The glossy flier was posted on a bulletin border in a small, illegal outpost of Israeli settlers near Nablus in the West Bank when I visited last week. The black print appeared over [...]

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Haim Watzman I’m reading Rachel’s collected poems straight through for the first time. And being a translator (but not, I should emphasize, a poet), I can’t resist the temptation to try my hand at an English version of one. This is an ongoing project that I’ll be updating as I polish and improve it. I [...]

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