A guide for the perplexed

A modern-day tale of love and suspense

The spy who loved

A Jew, a woman and Churchill’s favorite spy: Christine Granville, flesh-and-blood hero

Before the revolution

Israeli director Dan Shadur talks about his new documentary about life under the Shah

Doing justice to Josephus

For most of Jewish history, Flavius Josephus was the odd man out

Reading Persian in Jerusalem

As Israel and Iran trade threats, first Iranian novels appear in Hebrew

Animating the Talmud

The Talmud has never looked so good

Hanin Zoabi, Balad, and the Jewish vote

MK Hanin Zoabi has had a tough term

Zoroastrian Exegetical Parables in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār

The parable has received little attention as a form in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature.

How Israel’s Arab citizens vote

The numbers are dire and it is not hard to understand why

Howard Zinn

At age 86, Howard Zinn destroyed history

A one-woman show that projects politics

For Jerusalem-based artist Li Lorian, puppet shows are not just for kids

The Afghan geniza

The road between the Afghani cities of Ghazni and Bamiyan is fraught with danger

Reimagining Jewish pilgrimage

There is a passage in Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ new memoir, “A Sense of Direction,” that will make any secularist smile

Beauty in a bulldozer

A Palestinian artist turns tools of destruction into works of terrifying beauty

City pirates

Shoedei Yam, a new Jerusalem gallery, presents art with attitude and a sense of history

Jonathan Kis-Lev’s Jerusalems

Entering the Art and Soul Gallery on Shlomtzion Ha-Malka Street, you exit Jerusalem

The fake fire

If the Dar-e-Mehr were the world, the fire altar would be its center

Expatriate act

Maya Arad breaks ground as an Israeli writer—by living in America

Chaya

Chaya can mean shadow, darkness, obscurity, or a ghostly apparition.

Gay orthodoxy

Trembling Before G-d begins with ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing sack-cloth