When Frank Lloyd Wright, ever the plainspoken Young Turk of modern architecture, even at 86, declared that he would not design “a Jewish synagogue,” it was not the answer his interlocutor and prospective client, Mortimer J. Cohen, rabbi of Philadelphia’s Beth Sholom Congregation, had hoped to hear. But before Cohen could protest, Wright cut him ...

Even had he been able, Bernie would not have known how to respond.
Groaning and soaked to the skin, his hands and face the consistency of wet papier-mâché, the old man endeavored to rise, only to fall back splashing into the freezer. “Dos iz efsher gan eydn?”
Again Bernie, his heart rattling the cage of his ribs, ...

1999.
Finding an old Jew in the deep freeze did not at first alter Bernie Karp’s routine in any measurable way. Overweight and unadventurous, he had no special friends to tell the story to even if he’d wanted, which he didn’t: It was nobody’s business. But even Bernie had to admit to himself that something had ...

When Moses Montefiore turned 100, in 1884, England’s chief rabbi composed a special prayer service to mark the event. This liturgy, Abigail Green writes in her deeply impressive new biography Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Harvard), was recited by Jews in every corner of the world: “The Jewish Chronicle reported celebrations in Italy, Holland, ...

He emerged from the cottage just as Casimir, a sooty-eyed Polish porter with hair like thatch, was tugging along Yosl’s pussle-gutted mare by a frayed piece of rope; and though he knew the beast to be next to useless, Salo straightaway turned over his inheritance (minus the postcard and thimble) to the porter in exchange ...

Some historical personalities lived so long and ranged so widely that they pose unusual challenges to biographers. Take Moses Montefiore, who lived from 1784 to 1885 and was among the most prominent men, let alone Jews, of his era. An Italian-born British banker, he made a fortune working with the Rothschilds, was knighted by Queen ...

I was warned off the film by well-meaning friends—one of whom worried I would take it too personally, given my Teutonic background, and another disturbed by what she described as the film’s atmosphere of “sadism.” But, after hesitating, I finally caught Austrian director Michael Haneke’s extraordinary film The White Ribbon—one of the Oscar nominees in ...