Review of Mark Mazower’s What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home (Other Press 2017) pp. 400 Mark Mazower’s latest book, What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home, is a descriptive voyage of his family’s journey. Mazower’s discoveries are made all the more interesting because … Read more
Review of Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Anti-Semitism and Gender ed. Jack Jacobs (Cambridge 2017) pp.374 This important book is based on an international conference on Jews and the Left held in New York in 2012. As the subtitle denotes, the chapters explore questions of religion, Zionism, anti-Semitism, Marxism and Soviet Communism and contain some remarkable … Read more
Last week, the remains of King Victor Emanuel III were brought back from exile in Egypt to Italy by an official air force aircraft — and then quietly reinterred in the burial plot for members of the House of Savoy. The Italian Jewish community strongly condemned this, because the king had not only been a … Read more
The root for “coin” in Hebrew, tevah, is the same as that of the “nature” of a human being. Just as God stamped an individuality on a person, so an ancient moneyer hammered a die on to a circle of silver. Coinage was also a form of propaganda for those in authority and conveyed often … Read more