Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was perhaps the foremost Jewish intellectual of the twentieth century. Pioneering the study of Jewish mysticism as a legitimate academic discipline, he overturned the rationalist bias of his predecessors and revealed an ex...

An insider's perspective on the life and influence of Israel's first native-born prime minister, his bold peace initiatives, and his tragic assassination. More than two decades have passed since prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995,...

A film-centric portrait of the extraordinarily gifted movie director whose decades – long influence on American popular culture is unprecedented. "Everything about me is in my films", Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding t...

Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) rose from modest means as the son of a peddler to meteoric wealth at the helm of Sears, Roebuck. Yet his most important legacy stands not upon his business acumen but on the pioneering changes he introduced to the practic...

According to Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis was "the Jewish Jefferson", the greatest critic of what he called "the curse of bigness", in business and government, since the author of the Declaration of Independence. Published to commemorate the hund...

Of all the figures in the Bible, David arguably stands out as the most perplexing and enigmatic. He was many things: a warrior who subdued Goliath and the Philistines; a king who united a nation; a poet who created beautiful, sensitive verse; a loyal...

Barbra Streisand has been called the "most successful... talented performer of her generation" by Vanity Fair, and her voice, said pianist Glenn Gould, is "one of the natural wonders of the age". Streisand scaled the heights of entertainment-from a p...

A compelling and lucid account of the life and teachings of a founder of rabbinic Judaism and one of the most beloved heroes of Jewish history. Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and on...

A moving inquiry into the dramatic life, epic success, and ultimate tragedy of the great Hebrew poet. By the time he was twenty-eight, Hayim Nahman Bialik was already considered the National Hebrew Poet. He had only published a single collection, bu...

<p>A spirited portrait of the colorful, irrepressible, and iconoclastic American collector who fearlessly advanced the cause of modern art One of twentieth-century America's most influential patrons of the arts, Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) broug...