Arts & Culture

Hasidic historiography, inter-sectarian violence, the struggle against Breslov, and the case of Yitzchak Nachum Twerski.

Ne'echaz Basvach
By David Assaf
Mercaz Zalman Shazar

Several year ago, still sporting payess and a more-or-less Chasidic appearance, I met a girl in Greenwich village who stopped me on McDougal Street to tell me, “I think Hasidic Jews…

This weekend I read a book called Fiedler on the Roof, a collection of essays about literature and Jewish identity by Leslie Fiedler. I received this book from a cyber-friend who, unaware that…

BOOK REVIEW: Unlike most books, which I approach with an objective eye and mind, books about Hasidim instinctively arouse my jaundiced cynicism. My cynicism is justified: nearly every article or book or film about Hasidim gets it wrong. Most of these works are informed by presuppositions and stereotypes, and tend to overuse/misuse kitschy “Jewish”...
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Let’s start by judging this book by its cover, which cleverly illustrates the title. (I have a degree in design, so I’m allowed to do that.) The photo shows a Chasidic man, complete with shtreimel and bekishe, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan. Thus, it highlights the ambivalence that many Chasidic rebels feel...
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A Serious Man has been called hilarious comedy, genius high-brow tragedy, the best Coen brothers film, the Jewy-est, most auto-biographical Coen brothers film, a modern day story of Job, a medieval story of a dybbuk, and much else besides. But mostly it has been called dark and funny, confusing and mysterious. Dark and...
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