October 19, 2026
In 1943, while the war was raging in the west and my eighteen-year-old Ukrainian-born maternal grandfather was freezing with other fresh recruits in the shallow trenches somewhere on the Mongolian border, far from action, the sergeant arrived with the question: “Anyone here finished middle school?” My grandfather raised his hand and soon was on his...
Read MoreOctober 12, 2026
Every film is a portrait of the community that made it. No artist works alone, of course. Yet even the smallest no-budget movies require dozens of people in front of and behind the camera — background actors, set decorators, lighting supervisors, production assistants, color correctors, you name it — to make their way to events...
Read MoreOctober 6, 2026
On October 7, 2023, Shlomo Efrati was called up for reserve duty. He was stationed at the Civilian Casualty Collection Station, for treating bodies of civilian casualties. 10.8.2023 “When my children learn and celebrate the Holy One Blessed Be He says to the angels look at my beloved people in their pain and trouble how...
Read MoreSeptember 28, 2026
James Gray is the least heralded major American filmmaker now working. From Little Odessa, released in 1994 when he was 25, to his new film Paper Tiger, his ninth, Gray has carved out a serious body of work in American movies at a time when most American movies have no time for anything serious. As...
Read MoreSeptember 28, 2026
Most of the Jewish community in Israel does not think there needs to be a critical examination of the Israeli war in Gaza. For the opposing camp, championed by the radical left, the assertion that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza is a necessary prerequisite for entering into any conversation at all. Marooned between blocs...
Read MoreSeptember 21, 2026
Midway through Plato’s Symposium the comic poet Aristophanes takes the floor. He tells us that, in the beginning, we were whole, shaped like the heavenly bodies. But we became too powerful and made war on the gods, after which they punished us by tearing us in two. We now resembled the Greek gods (which is...
Read MoreSeptember 14, 2026
The war in Sudan entered its fourth year on April 15, 2026, one chapter in a long series that has spanned decades. This particular war is a violent power struggle between two military factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). They are fighting for control over state resources and...
Read MoreSeptember 7, 2026
2024 The hill I want to die on is Golgotha and the season is spring in the Gulf and the vista from the cross is a stretch of I-10 between College Station, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana, on the grim drive home after my brother Bryan died in 2024. Every 9/11 survivor will tell you...
Read MoreAugust 31, 2026
Dan Robbins was a competent painter. He was not a great painter. He knew that about himself. Robbins made a living in the art departments of car manufacturers until, in 1949, he was hired by the Palmer Show Card Paint Company and tasked with selling more paint. Robbins was no student of art history, but...
Read MoreAugust 24, 2026
On Figueroa Street in Los Angeles, the prostitutes are as young as 13 years old. They walk the sidewalks in heat and cold waiting for men to stop their cars and beckon to them. The girls have a nightly earnings quota. If they don’t reach it, their traffickers will punish them. The customers want girls...
Read MoreAugust 17, 2026
The impulse to separate the literary critic from the mere consumer, the serious reader from the lightweight, is abiding. Several means of demarcation have been used; one is how much interest, and what kind, a reader shows in the person behind the work. The Guardian recently drew a line against the persistent interest in Elena...
Read MoreAugust 10, 2026
The dogs barked as I approached the safehouse, but Kite soon called them off and welcomed me into the small space he shared with other members of the resistance. As he did so, I noticed his prosthetic leg. There was some chatter as I got in; a handful of people lived there. A lanky man...
Read More
