More than simply a method of communication shared by a common people, the Hebrew language was always an integral part of the Jewish cultural system and, as such, tightly interwoven into the lives of the prophets, poets, scribes and priests who used i...

In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of only...

Our contemporary celebration of difference, respect for pluralism, and avowal of identity politics have come to be regarded as the hallmarks of a progressive, modern democracy. Yet despite embracing many of its values, we have at the same time become...

From cannibalism to light-calligraphy, from self-harming to animal sacrifice, from meat entwined with sex toys to a commodity-embedded ice wall, the idiosyncratic output of Chinese time-based art over the past twenty-five years has invigorated contem...

When apartheid ended in 1994, a radiant optimism suggested a bright future for the new, unified South Africa. But today, even in the midst of a vibrant economy, the cumulative effect of the country's corrosive past – three hundred years of colonialis...

On December 29, 1918, the Spartakus League, a Marxist revolutionary movement, rose up in Germany calling for an end to class rule by the bourgeoisie. Massive demonstrations followed and more than 500,000 Berliners took to the streets in January – onl...

Peter Handke, a giant of Austrian literature, has produced decades of fiction, poetry, and drama informed by some of the most tumultuous events in modern history. But even as these events shaped his work, the presence of his mother – a woman whose li...

A searing introduction to Franco Fortini, a Jewish communist and a major figure in postwar Italian intellectual life, "The Dogs of the Sinai" is a book against – against those who love to rush to the aid of the victors, against the widespread and rac...

"New York... I HATE IT... I LOVE IT... I DON'T KNOW..." These are the reflections of Max Frisch (1911-1991) writing from his apartment in the Big Apple near the end of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1946 and continuing until his death at the age...

Among liberal thinkers, there is an optimistic belief that men and women are on a cultural journey toward equality – in the workplace, on the street, and in the home. But observation and evidence both tell us that in many ways this progress has stopp...