Pale of Settlement

Spielberg’s Lincoln and the Jews: An Untold Story

Lincoln represents a missed opportunity to show that Jews didn’t just turn up in America in the wake of Russian pogroms. 

Reform of Tradition, Tradition of Reform

Max Lilienthal’s life provides a lens through which we watch American Judaism, Reform Judaism in particular, struggle with the consequences of its own idiosyncratic condition.

Max Lilienthal’s Aborted Return

In Bruce L. Ruben’s new biography Max Lilienthal: The Making of the American Rabbinate, about one of the pioneers of the American Reform movement, I was surprised to learn that Lilienthal almost made a second trip to Tsarist Russia.