Jacob Silverman

For the Los Angeles Review of Books, I wrote about Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger’s Jews and Words. 

Perhaps no religion has as much existential uncertainty baked into the product as Judaism. Who, or what, is a Jew? The question remains Jewishness’s most persistent quandary. In modern times, this has not only been a theological or anthropological question but also a political and military one: leaders as diverse as Adolf Hitler and David Ben-Gurion have sought to develop criteria that may nail down Jewishness as something discrete, distinctive, and susceptible to legislation. But still some confusion persists, some hazy aura around the edges of Jewish identity, evident in the thousand and one sects and offshoots and private credos that, collectively, constitute “the Jewish people.”

The rest is here.

Also, here’s my recent ode to Jean-Ralphio.

I wrote about the obsession with historical accuracy in this season’s holiday movies.

In the opening scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, text flashes onto the screen: “1858. Two years before the Civil War.” Tarantino has not only given us the year, but also added its relation to an monumentally important event in American history. He assumed, perhaps correctly, that this chronological hand-holding was necessary to adequately situate the film for viewers. Of course, it’s appropriate that it’s Tarantino, whose fidelity to history is nonexistent, who offers this curiously didactic moment.

The rest is here.

I wrote about my Sheldon Adelson complex.

The cartoonishly evil Sheldon Adelson is a Jewish conspiracy theory incarnated. Which is why, no matter how much I despise his politics, election season bankrolling, and ethically dubious gambling empire, I can’t shake a creeping sense of tribal defensiveness when he’s depicted at his worst.

You can read the rest here.

For the Poetry Foundation, I wrote about the short life and career of poet Samuel Greenberg and the critical debate over his influence.

I also contributed to Slate’s list of the overlooked books of 2012.

I wrote about what it feels like to watch a war in real-time, to be taken to the limits of spectatorship:

War has always been something of a spectator affair, if not downright voyeuristic. On July 21, 1861, during the First Battle of Bull Run, some well-to-do Washingtonians brought their families to picnic near the battle site, anticipating a Union rout of Confederate forces. The battle turned calamitous, and the picnickers were forced to flee, along with the Union army.

During the Civil War, the invention of photography created a sense of immediacy previously unseen in war. Ordinary civilians were offered a vivid record of what war was like and the devastation it wrought. From then onwards, each new technological development—the telegraph, wireless radio, television, satellite broadcasting, the Internet—expanded the range, speed, and quality of media accounts of war. By the first Gulf War, Americans could watch a battle thousands of miles away unfold in real-time.

Read the rest here.

[Photo is of picnickers at the Battle of Bull Run]

For Open Zion, I wrote about dueling protests in front of the Israeli consulate in New York.