Talking Torah with Rabbi Rebecca Alpert Zeek's Editor-in-chief, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, talks with Rabbi Rebecca Alpert about social justice, feminism and her book, Whose Torah? Zeek: When people hear your name, Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, they tend to think, "Jewish feminist ... [Read more]

A World Without AshkenazimSince its release in 1982, Jacob Goldwasser's first feature, Under The Nose (Mitahat La'af) has acquired cult status in Israel, setting the cinematic standard for portraying domestic social problems for many years to come. To mark its 25th ... [Read more]

These Hollows, and SuchlikeDonari Braxton has written brave quantities of fiction, poetry, theater, and "cross-genre work," and has also translated. His writing has been widely anthologized in the UK and the United States, and his first collection of stories, I, ... [Read more]

The Origins of Israeli Post-Rock During the late 1970s, I can't remember how many times my siblings and I would hear a song on the radio--most often English-language pop and disco--and try to sing along. We'd mimic the lyrics, switching back and forth between English and ... [Read more]

TWO POEMS by RONNY SOMECK Biting into Her Beauty In memory of Noah Orbach And then came this tall guy and said he had been Ordering large meals at Burger King where she was working Just to bite into her beauty. Her death milkeed his teeth. He no longer ... [Read more]

The Four Horsemen of the New Atheism I'm tired. Most of my reading time in the last few weeks has been devoted to the "Four Horseman of Atheism"-Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. And now that I've emerged from my ... [Read more]

Israeli Fiction: "Laundry" Suzane Adam’s acclaimed novel, Laundry, reminds readers that childhood is all too often pervaded by fears, both real and imagined, both spoken and unspoken. In this lyric excerpt, a grown woman recalls the distant torments of her childhood in ... [Read more]

Monogamy and Monotheism   I so want to be in love To believe monotheistically in you, that you are my tender, most tender love and give to you my sense of wonder -- worlds captured in words - Abraham Joshua Heschel, "Youngest ... [Read more]

Beta Israel: Orphans of Circumstance Under the provisions of Israel's Law of Return, more than 120,000 Ethiopian Jews have settled in the country over the last three decades. Many of these Jews arrived during the 1980s and 1990s, when, in response to civil war and famine in ... [Read more]

Poem: "Miriam and Her Brothers"MIRIAM AND HER BROTHERS And the Lord said unto Moses: ‘If her father had but spit in her face, should she not hide in shame seven days? Let her be shut up without the camp seven days, and after that she shall be brought in again.’ And ... [Read more]

Welcome to My Neighborhood My wife and I moved to San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood four years ago. Located on a hill at the southern end of the city, it's just about the only place in town where Palestinians, queer families, Israeli software engineers, ... [Read more]

Leading From The Center: Bernard Avishai's The Hebrew Republic Bernard Avishai is a thinker and writer I've admired for some time, ever since I read his rather unfortunately titled 1985 work, The Tragedy of Zionism. That book was not, as one might think, an anti-Zionist exercise. Quite the opposite. ... [Read more]

POEM: Isaiah Interviewed: An ExcerptIsaiah Interviewed: An Excerpt Did I see the throne before the royal funeral or afterwards? I guess I never really saw the throne in my vision. The folds of the gown obscured the sapphire. If indeed it was ... [Read more]

Albatross Yelena Akhtiorskaya was born in 1985 in Odessa, Ukraine, a city of prodigious talent, and the chauvinisms that follow: To those who left it following the fall of the Soviets, Odessa was "the best city in the world," its men were the ... [Read more]

Last Summer War, Next Summer Laughter It's the year of Arab-Israeli comedy. Comics are the new rock stars and, in lieu of major stadium concerts for peace, we have stand-up, sitcom, and movie hilarity taking on the bitterest simmering geopolitical conflict of the past century ... [Read more]

POEMS: "Alive" plus Mr. NobodyAlive At the hour when the world ceases to be you will be sitting under a plane-tree half unleafed on a lively, noisy avenue nothing around you will have really changed you will still be father, son and lover a ... [Read more]

Israeli Fiction: "Raining Neighbors" One of the most impressive magazines to appear amidst the recent profusion of literary journals in Israel is Masmerim, meaning “nails.” Edited by publishing veterans, Masmerim features the same kind of high caliber writing and slick format ... [Read more]

Israeli Fiction: "Everybody's Autobiography Returns" One of the most impressive magazines to appear amidst the recent profusion of literary journals in Israel is Masmerim, meaning “nails.” Edited by publishing veterans, Masmerim features the same kind of high caliber writing and slick format ... [Read more]

The Jewish American Princess--Revisited What ever happened to the Jewish American Princess? Once—from the 1960s until at least the end of the 1980s—the icon of the JAP was all but ubiquitous in American Jewish culture. The girl (yes, she was always a girl, even when she was a ... [Read more]

Dreaming with Rodger Kamenetz "A dream provides an exact tincture of the soul...to wake us from a faint-hearted life." So writes Rodger Kamenetz in The History of Last Night's Dream. Kamenetz is probably best known as the poet who accompanied a ... [Read more]