FICTION The Humbling by Philip Roth. (Houghton Mifflin, 160pp. $22) In recent years, Philip Roth has ventured from the large ambition of novels such as American Pastoral (1997)

FICTION Laish  by Aharon Appelfeld. Translated from the Hebrew by Aloma Halter. (Schocken, 231 pp. $23.95) “Good literature,” the Hebrew writer Aharon Appelfeld once told

The morning sun streams through the windows that frame the Mount of Olives to the east and the hills of Bethlehem to the south. Photographs

Who would have thought a book of prayers would become a best seller? Yet A Jewish Woman’s Prayer Book, edited by Aliza Lavie (Spiegel & Grau/Random

If you want to know what really goes on in the daily life of Tel Aviv, you need not stroll along its broad boulevards, shop

In the Metaphor: Eileen Pollack’s Jewish Literary Fiction By Judy Bolton-Fasman Eileen Pollack is the consummate writer’s writer. She dismantles stereotypes and puts them back

Less than a year after joining New York’s 18th Infantry Regiment, Jacob Rappaport—having fled his family to avoid an arranged marriage—thinks he is about to

NONFICTION Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker. (Simon & Schuster, 566 pp. $30) In Human Smoke, writer