Great House, Nicole Krauss’ new novel, is a triumph. Smartly executed and beautifully crafted, this multi-layered novel moves back and forth through the chaos of modern Jewish history. Krauss touches on the Holocaust, the Yom Kippur War, Chile under Pinochet, and travels from New York to Jerusalem to London to Budapest as she weaves a story focused on a desk...Read On

A conventional biography of Hillel, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin freely admits at the outset of his new book, is impossible. We know little about Hillel—nothing about his parents, not even his wife’s name. We’re not certain of his profession, nor do we know with precision the date of his death. But the alternative, Telushkin ably demonstrates, need not be a mere quasi-random collection of rabbinic aphorisms attributed to his subject...Read On