Welcome to … Iowa

So last week I returned from five days reporting on the massive federal raid of the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. As always, I came home totally beat, and now, Sunday afternoon, I’m more or less back to myself, except for this nagging pain in my back that seems connected to, well, nothing. Doesn’t matter what [...]

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Down with love

This is something I think I might like to try. Lance Stelzer, a twice-divorced Jewish lawyer and single dad in Miami, was down on his luck. He was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Then his girlfriend left him, while he was sick, for another man. So, he sued her.
The Miami New Times has some [...]

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Is Israel finished?

That was the question the Atlantic Monthly ostensibly sought to answer in its cover story this month, pegged to Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations. Its author, Jeffrey Goldberg, who penned what I still consider to be one of the finest pieces of Mideast journalism ever, doesn’t really answer, but he does paint a pretty bleak picture. [...]

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Beating a dead horse

After the events of this weekend, beating a dead horse is probably in bad taste. Still, I can’t resist one final word about Greg Levey’s book. Levey is starting to get some less than glowing press. The Jewish Week ran a review last week that cited my book review, though in trying to get at [...]

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Shut Up, I’m Blogging

Last week I published a piece about a new memoir written by Gregory Levey. I thought I was uniquely suited to write this piece because Levey’s memoir was about his time writing speeches for the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., and once upon a time, I had done the very same thing.
The piece went live [...]

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