Reader Letters
Letters in response to Benzion C. Kaganoff's November 1955 article, "Jewish First Names Through the Ages."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Nathan Glazer and readers.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Jakob J. Petuchowski's October 1955 article, "The Jewish Mission to the Nations."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Gerson D. Cohen and readers.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to W. Z. Laqueur's December 1955 article, "The Katsner Case."
William Petersen
Perhaps the most important single fact about the postwar American society, William Petersen indicates, has been the sudden dizzy climb of the birth rate, which has taken the whole country, and especially the demographers, by surprise, with as yet incalculable consequences for our economy, family style, system of public education, and indeed every aspect of American life.
Franz Borkenau
With Soviet policy once more in a state of flux, the need to penetrate the motives and forces that now determine it becomes greater than ever.
Nathan Glazer
This is the second of two articles on the present revival of Judaism and Jewish communal feeling in this country.
James Grossman
The Dreyfus Care again--and still again. The facts are becoming clearer with the remove of time, as the latest book on the Affair, which James Grossman here discusses, makes evident.
Harvey Shapiro
Two poems by Harvey Shapiro.
George Lichtheim
The dismay aroused in Western capitals by the announcement last fall of the Egyptian-Soviet arms deal has been succeeded by a mood of optimistic resignation--Nasser will after all not take Egypt behind the Iron Curtain. but are we continuing to underrate the freedom of commetment and maneuver possessed by an extremist nationalist movement under the leadership of ambitious army officers?
Reader Letters
"Southern Unionist," a memoir by Philip Phillips.
F. R. Allemann
Can democracy in Germany survive Adenauer’s departure from the scene? F. R. Allemann here discusses the dangers as well as advantages of Adenauer’s extraordinary prestige and personal power, and attempts to cast some light into the obscure future of the post-Adenauer Bonn Republic. Foreign correspondent of the Zurich Tat and contributor to Der Monat of West Berlin, Mr. Allemann made his first appearance in Commentary last March with “Will History Repeat Itself in Germany?”
Jacob Korg
The 92nd Street "Y" is one of the liveliest Jewish community centers in America; it is also at the same time a kind of city center for all of New York.
An excerpt from a letter written in 1789 by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Ladi--the “Tanya,” as he came to be called--to his congregation.
Ray Alan
In this portrait of the Druzes, a little known exotic Middle Eastern people, some 18,000 of whom live in Israel, Ray Alan suggests that there may be more to the problem of East-West "Communication" than statesmen have supposed.
Robert Lekachman
How far is it possible to elucidate the complexities of the social sciences for the lay public? In this examination of the work of the economist J. K. Galbraith, Robert Lekachman indicates some of the dangers besetting a popular exposition of economic issues. Mr. Lekachman, assistant professor of economics at Barnard College, last appeared in these pages in August 1955 with “Our ‘Revolution’ in Income Distribution.”
Reviewed by Milton Himmelfarb
Reviewed by Herbert Wechsler
Reviewed by Benjamin Kaplan
Reviewed by Albert Weisser
Reader Letters
An exchange between Algene Ballif and readers on her November 1955 piece, "Anne Fank on Broadway."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Kurt Grossman's letter in the January 1956 issue.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to David Daiches's December 1955 piece, "My Father, and His Father."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Theodore Frankel's November 1956 piece, "The Uptown Social Club."
Hal Lehrman
Hal Lehrman’s on-the-spot report from Cairo.
Jakob J. Petuchowski
Modern scholarship’s rescue of the Pharisees from the New Testamentary cloud under which they dwelt for so long has been accompanied by a revival of their reputation within the Jewish community—so much so, indeed, that it is modem Judaism’s proud boast to be the “heir of the Pharisees.” But, Jakob J. Petuchowski asks, can this title be made good? Do we rightly understand the nature of Pharisaism?
James Rorty
Racial and religious prejudice, which is increasingly on the defensive in modern America, is still entrenched on the college campus in the discriminatory practices of too many fraternities and sororities
Aubrey Hodes
Two poems by Aubrey Hodes.
F. R. Leavis
The scene of "Pudd’nhead Wilson"—a much neglected novel that F. R. Leavis ranks as a masterpiece—is Dawson’s Landing in Missouri on the Mississippi, before the Civil War; its plot turns on a confusion of identities between a Negro slave and his white master, a situation Mark Twain exploits for the insights it affords into the moral complexities of the American Negro’s plight.
H. Stuart Hughes
One school of thought holds that we must challenge Communism’s revolutionary dynamism with a dynamic program of our own, in which the backward and old colonial areas of the world would be helped by the West to modernize themselves.
Bruno Bettelheim
The visit to Dachau that Bruno Bettelhbim describes here was his second. A Viennese by birth and education, Dr. Bettelheim was arrested by the Nazis after the Anschluss and spent a year in Buchenwald and Dachau.
William Schack
This is the second of two articles (the first appeared in December 1955) in which William Schack reports on the postwar boom in synagogue and center art.
S. Niger
Widely known as the dean of Yiddish literature in this country, Niger produced some twenty volumes of criticism in Yiddish. The following selection, taken from the introduction to Bilingualism in the History of Jewish Literature (Louis Lamed Foundation, 1941), provides an example of the detachment and scholarly perspective with which Niger approached even the most controversial issues.
Solomon F. Bloom
It was a long way from Rumania to the United States in the early decades of this century, especially when measured in terms of athletics.
Menke Katz
"At a Patched Window," a poem by Menke Katz.
Paul Kecskemeti
Psychoanalytical thought has been in a state of flux for quite a while now, as efforts continue to revise Freud’s original insights and conclusions in the light of clinical experience as well as by intellectual analysis.
Reviewed by Norman Podhoretz
Reviewed by Henry Bamford Parkes
Reviewed by Leslie A. Fiedler
Reviewed by Marshall Sklare
Reviewed by Theodore Frankel
Reader Letters
An exchange between Maurice J. Goldbloom and readers on his December 1955 article, "Cost of the Security Programs."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Arthur J. Brodbeck's February 1956 piece, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities."
Reader Letters
An exchange between H.L. Ginsberg and readers on his November 1955 article "More Light from Judean Caves."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Ben-zion Kaganoff's November 1955 article "Jewish First Names through the Ages."
Samuel Lubell
This is the first of two articles by Samuel Lubell on current trends in American politics, both of them drawn from a book, "Revolt of the Moderates."
Hal Lehrman
Here is a second article in which Hal Lehrman reports the findings of his latest tour of the Middle East. The first, “Three Weeks in Cairo,” appeared in our February 1956 issue.
George Lichtheim
A broad view of the collapse of British policy and direction in the Middle East which ushered in the present crisis in Anglo-American leadership.
Evelyn N. Rossman
In our issue of November 1954, Evelyn N. Rossman—the name is a pseudonym—described the process by which she and her family, as part of the general migration to the suburbs and beyond, settled in the small New England town of Northrup (also a pseudonym). Now more at home in Northrup than she ever was in her native New York, Mrs. Rossman continues her reflections on the new Jewish life in America.
Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau critiques A. J. Toynbee's "Study of History."
Maurice Goldbloom
Is there a distinction between genuine measures for national security and bureaucratic harassment?
S. L. Blumenson
When in 1894 New York’s reformers, led by the Reverend Charles Henry Parkhurst, took out after Tammany Hall following the Lexow Committee’s revelations, things looked bad for the Lodge. But down at the grass roots of the Lower East Side its loyal wardheelers were holding the people firm against the “uptown” assault.
Reader Letters
Selections from the Midrash and Talmud.
Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz discusses in a single context two very dissimilar representations of contemporary America—John O’Hara’s "Ten North Frederick," and Mary McCarthy’s "A Charmed Life."
Arnold M. Rose
Speculation abounds on the consequences to be expected from the spread of automation in industry, and Arnold M. Rose here reviews what seems to him the most authoritative thinking on the subject as gleaned from books and articles.
Reviewed by Richard Chase
Reviewed by Alfred Werner
Reviewed by Oscar Handlin
Reviewed by Nahum N. Glatzer
Reviewed by Bertram D. Wolfe
Reader Letters
Letters in response to James Rorty's February 1956 piece "Greek Letter Discrimination."
Reader Letters, Reader Letters and Reader Letters
Letters in response to Nathan Glazer's January 1956 piece, "The Jewish Revival in America: II."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Norman Podhoretz and readers on his February 1956 reviews of Herman Wouk's "Marjorie Morningstar."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Jacob Korg's January 1956 article "92nd Street Y."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Milton Himmelfarb's reviews of Jacob Agus's "Guide-posts in Modern Judaism."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Walter Laqueur and readers on his article on the "Kastner Case" in the December 1955 issue.
Reader Letters
An exchange on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Bruno Bettelheim's February 1956 article "Returning to Dachau."
Herbert Luethy
Pierre Poujade’s movement, swollen by its astonishing successes in the recent elections for France’s National Assembly, has created alarm by its fascist overtones.
Benno Weiser
The vicissitudes which led Benno Weiser finally to adopt Israeli citizenship began in Vienna, where he was born in 1914.
Samuel Lubell
In ‘The Return of Two-Party Politics,” Samuel Lubell showed how the moderate elements in the nation have refused to cast their lot permanently with either party. Here he shows how closely this situation is reflected in Congress, where political control changes hands with almost every major election.
Dennis H. Wrong
Dennis Wrong on sociologist David Riesman.
Ray Alan
The Arab world, for whose friendship both West and East are bidding energetically today, is little known in its historical “heartland,” the Arabian Peninsula, an area of desert and thin coastal settlement stretching southward between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Emanuel Rackman
The boom in synagogue building is perhaps the most striking feature of the postwar American Jewish scene.
Morris Freedman
Soap operas come and go, changing with the times, but in a quarter of a century “The Goldbergs” have moved from radio to the stage and on to television without much damage to their original character.
The following passages from the Zohar illustrate the typical blend of the rational and the supernatural, the heavenly and the earthly, which is Jerusalem.
Dwight Macdonald
The National Review, the newest American weekly of countrywide circulation, represents another attempt of the “doctrinaire” right to find a local habitation and a name.
James Brown
How original were the religious ideas and practices of the ancient Hebrews? A new approach to the Hebrew Bible, based on archaeological findings and analysis of other ancient Semitic literatures, has for the first time placed the faith of ancient Israel clearly in its Near Eastern context, raising once again the question of its unique contribution.
Reviewed by Bruno Bettelheim
Reviewed by R. F. Tannenbaum
Reviewed by Spencer Brown
Reviewed by Lillian Blumberg McCall
Reviewed by Judd L. Teller
Reviewed by Daniel J. Boorstin
Reader Letters
Letters in response to James Rorty's Febraury 1956 article, "Greek Letter Discrimination."
Reader Letters
An exchange between F.R. Leavis and readers on his February 1956 article "Mark Twain's Neglected Classic."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Jakob Petuchowski and readers on his February 1956 piece "The Pharisaic Tradition Today."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Benno Bettelheim's April 1956 reviews of Kenneth Clark's "Prejudice and Your Child."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Samuel Lubell's March 1956 article "The Return of Two-Party Politics."
Hal Lehrman
The crisis in the Middle East cries for solution more urgently than ever, and Hal Lehrman, in the third of a series of articles, reports one proposed line of action.
Walter Z. Laqueur
Communist machinations are not the sole cause of the Middle Eastern crisis, but it would certainly lack its present urgency without them.
Judith Bernays Heller
Sigmund Freud, born a hundred years ago on May 6, was the first to demonstrate the all-important influence of parents on the psychic life of people. Here, a niece’s memoir of Freud’s parents shows them-especially his mother-in a light rather different from that in which he (and his biographers) have let us see them.
Herbert J. Gans
Herbert Gans on American Jewry.
James Rorty
James Rorty conducts us on a tour of Prince Edward County, which is one of the “South Side” counties of Virginia that are vehemently opposing desegregation.
Julius Margolin
Though cast in fictional form, the story of Galya is a substantially true one.
Felix Weltsch
Felix Weltsch on Baruch Spinoza.
H. Stuart Hughes
H. Stuart Hughes finds that California heralds the America of the future.
David Boroff
This portrait of an immigrant Jewish father is the second character sketch from the pen of David Boroff. The first, “Garment Center Success,” appeared in October 1955.
Reader Letters
A medieval hebrew fable.
Norman Podhoretz
For this analysis of the personality of Harry Truman, Norman Podhoretz draws mainly on the two volumes of the ex-President’s memoirs, "Year of Decisions," and "Years of Trial and Hope."
Stanley Edgar Hyman
Two recent on child behavior are here reviewed.
Reviewed by Jakob J. Petuchowski
Reviewed by Dennis H. Wrong
Reviewed by Bernard W. Wishy
Reviewed by Robert W. Flint
Reviewed by Theodore Norman
Reader Letters
An exchange between Dwight Macdonald and readers on his April 1956 piece "Scrambled Eggheads on the Right."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Albert Weisser and readers on his January 1956 review of Chemjo Vinaver's "Anthology of Jewish Music."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to S.L. Blumenson's March 1956 story "The Politicians."
C. Vann Woodward
The desegregation crisis is here put into much needed historical perspective by an eminent scholar whose special field is the South.
Cecil Roth
The actual facts of the return of the Jews to England in 1656 after long absence, like most dramatic events in history, have become enveloped in legend and misinformation, from which Cecil Roth here tries to rescue them.
G. F. Hudson
Continuing the discussion in these pages of the present Middle Eastern crisis, G.F. Hudson here sets forth a policy by which the United States and Britain, he feels, can best advance the interests of the free world—and of peace.
Bertram D. Wolfe
The significance of the recent 20th Party Congress of the Russian Communist party is here explored by a noted expert in the history of Bolshevism.
Spencer Brown
Writing as a teacher and a parent, Spencer Brown, in this survey of current technique for spotting and then educating exceptionally gifted children, tries to suggest a sensible approach to the problem of precocity and early promise.
Judd L. Teller
What accounted for the passion and bitterness that made the contention between Hebrew and Yiddish assume the proportions of a cultural civil war?
Paul R. Hays
Paul Hays on academic freedom and Communist teachers.
Herbert J. Gans
Herbert Gans on the religious revival in America.
Walter Goodman
Walter Goodman here visits a Jewish War Veterans post.
Solomon Schechter
Solomon Schechter on the Jewish Boswell.
Robert Graves
Robert Graves here reviews Richard M. Dorson’s "Negro Folktales in Michigan."
T. Harry Williams
In this portrait of Thaddeus Stevens, who was the architect and moving spirit of the Old Reconstruction, T. Harry Williams attempts to provide a realistic appraisal of the man who led the Republican Radicals in Congress during Lincoln’s and Johnson’s administrations.
Reviewed by Nathan Glazer
Reviewed by Isaac Rosenfeld
Reviewed by George Lichtheim
Reviewed by Alfred Werner
Reviewed by Hans Meyerhoff
Reviewed by Oscar Handlin
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Jakob Petuchowski's May 1956 review of "The Bridge."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Judd Teller and readers on his June 1956 article "Secular Hebrew and Esoteric Yiddish."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Herbert J. Gans's two-part piece entitled "The Future of American Jewry."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Dwight Macdonald's April 1956 article "Scarnmbled Eggheads on the Right."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to the exchange between Stanley Kessler and Jakob Petuchowski in the May 1956 issue.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Dennis Wrong's April 1956 article "Riesman and the Age of Sociology."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to David Boroff's May 1956 piece, "Papa."
Reader Letters
A correction by Bertram Wolfe to an article of his in the June 1956 issue "Stalinism Versus Stalin."
H. R. Trevor-Roper
That Hitler’s death became a “mystery” owing solely to Soviet efforts has never been so conclusively demonstrated or documented as in this article by H. R. Trevor-Roper.
Walter Zander
In advocating a re-orientation of Israel’s foreign policy towards Asian and African nationalism, Walter Zander speaks for an important body of Jewish opinion that sees no other way out of the Arab-Israeli impasse.
Alan F. Westin
American liberalism—as Alan F. Westin here shows—has done a complete about face in its attitude toward the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review.
Simon D. Messing
Simon D. Messing visited the Falashas, the “Black Jews of Ethiopia,” while on an anthropological field trip.
Leon Poliakov
Leon Poliakov discusses the origins of the Russian tradition of state anti-Semitism.
James Rorty
James Rorty here surveys the progress of school desegregation throughout the state that has been in the forefront of the Southern opposition to the Supreme Court decision of May 1954.
David Boroff
A memoir of his youth in summer camp by David Boroff.
Sholom Aleichem
When Sholom Aleichem returned to Kasrilevke after a long absence, he found that the old solidarity of shtetl life had been replaced by a new party spirit. Modern Kasrilevke had two theaters (mostly empty), two dramatic societies, two choral groups, two migrant organizations—and two Yiddish newspapers, the Yarmulke (Orthodox) and the Little Cap (“progressive”). Each published a daily four-page edition—except, of course, on Saturday.
Diana Trilling and Philip Rahv
Diana Trilling and Philip Rahv here discuss American liberalism in connection with Mr. Rahv’s review of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (May 1956).
Leslie A. Fiedler
Leslie A. Fiedler discusses American liberalism in his brief review of the career that has led Irwin Shaw from the "Bury the Dead" of the 30’s to the best-selling "Lucy Crown" of today.
Daniel Bell
The direction in which industrial society is headed, culturally and socially, is, of course, second to no other question in ultimate importance to all of us.
Reviewed by H. Stuart Hughes
Reviewed by Arthur J. Brodbeck
Reviewed by Everett C. Hughes
Reviewed by David Bernstein
Reader Letters and Reader Letters
An exchange between Paul R. Hays and readers on his June 1956 piece "Academic Freedom and Communist Teachers."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Herbert J. Gans's two-part series "The Future of American Jewry."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Harry Williams and readers on his June 1956 piece, "Thaddeus Stevens: An American Radical."
Charles Abrams
The plight of our new immigrants and migrants—Negro, Puerto Rican, Mexican—offers a serious challenge to our American way. Since their assimilation to the status of free and equal citizens cannot he left simply to the ordinary social and economic processes, politics has once again to take the lead.
Walter Z. Laqueur
The Oren case affords one of the most curious glimpses we have had, not only into what politics are like behind the Iron Curtain, but into the workings of the fellow-traveling mind.
Moses Hadas
Ever since the emancipation of the Jews from their medieval disabilities and restraints, individual Jews, and Judaism as a whole, have had to wrestle with the problem of a right relation to the world around them.
Charles Gaines
Two poems.
George Lichtheim
Once again: nationalism in the Middle East.
Ralph G. Ross
Who, and what, threaten academic freedom? And what are our professors really unhappy about?
Herbert Howarth
Pinhas Sadeh is an Israeli poet who is virtually unknown to American readers—a circumstance Herbert Howarth tries to remedy in this account of his personality and work.
Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff surveys "Memoirs of American Jews: 1775–1865," devoting particular attention to the material on Jewish life in this country before the Civil War.
Abraham Cahan
For over fifty years Abraham Cahan (1860–1951) was the chief editor of the New York Jewish Daily Forward, a Socialist organ which became the largest and most popular Yiddish newspaper in the world. Cahan here describes the events that led to his decision to leave Russia for America.
Bertram D. Wolfe
The “diaries of Maxim Litvinov” reveal once again how compatible Soviet, or Stalinist, sympathies are with a furtive kind of anti-Semitism.
J. K. Galbraith
J. K. Galbraith reviews Daniel R. Fusfeld's "The Economic Thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt."
Reviewed by Irving Kristol
Reviewed by John Hollander
Reviewed by Robert Gorham Davis
Reviewed by H. Stuart Hughes
Reviewed by Jakob J. Petuchowski
Reviewed by Suzanne Silberstein
Reader Letters
An exchange between Leon Poliakov and readers on his July 1956 piece "Official Anti-Semitism in Old Russia."
Reader Letters
A reader pays tribute to COMMENTARY.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Arthur Brodbeck's July 1956 review of Joan Dunn's "Retreat from Learning."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Walter Zandel's July 1956 piece "Arab Nationalism and Israel."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Dwight Macdonald's March 1956 piece "Scrambled Eggheads on the Right."
Oscar Handlin
Oscar Handlin discusses election politics.
Hal Lehrman
This detailed report on the pressing problems —military and financial—of Israel's security is the fourth in a series of articles by Hal Lehrman.
Benno Weiser
The high financial cost of Israel's defense as described in this issue by Hal Lehrman is, of course, only part of the price that beleaguered country has to pay for security.
Gerald Weales
Gerald Whales examines the shifting patterns of community life in America's “Motor City.”
Theodor Gaster
In the tumult of interpretation and argument over the Dead Sea Scrolls, and over the question of whether the Jewish sect at Qumran anticipated Christianity, the independent spiritual greatness of these texts has gone unappreciated, Theodor H. Gaster finds.
Sylvia Rothchild
A story.
Eric Bentley
The lack of candor about Communism that Eric Bentley finds in the American theatrical world provides part of the explanation for the confusion which still attends that subject.
Benzion C. Kaganoff
This survey of the origins of Jewish surnames by Benzion C. Kaganoff is a companion piece to the same writer’s much discussed “Jewish First Names Through the Ages” (November 1955).
Reader Letters
These renderings are taken from "The Dead Sea Scriptures," by Theodor H. Gaster.
Richard Chase
Richard Chase finds that the novels of Kingsley Amis portray and express a little noticed "Americanization" of English life and culture.
Richard Hofstadter
In this review of Robert E. Brown’s "Charles Beard and the Constitution," and Robert Allen "Rutland’s The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776–1794," Richard Hofstadter directs attention to an emerging school of younger American historians who have been systematically revising our image of the American past.
Reviewed by Dennis H. Wrong
Reviewed by Bernard W. Wishy
Reviewed by C. Vann Woodward
Reader Letters
An exchange between Moses Hadas and readers on his August 1956 article "Judaism and the Hellenistic Experience."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Irving Kristol's August 1956 review of Chester Bowles's book.
Reader Letters
An exchange between Jakob Petuchowski and readers on his review of "Justice and Judaism" in the August 1956 issue.
Reader Letters
Letters to the editor.
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Gerald Weales's September 1956 article, "Small-town Detroit."
Reader Letters
An exchange between James Brown and readers on his July 1956 review of Immanuel Lewy's "The Growth of the Pentateuch."
David Halberstam
In September the White Citizens Councils showed their latent strength by compelling schools that had been integrated without incident to re-adopt segregation.
Walter Z. Laqueur
Soviet anti-Semitism in the past has turned out to be a much larger phenomenon than even anti-Communists feared, and in its light the present Soviet hostility to Israel and friendliness to the Arabs seems to become all the more ominous.
H. Stuart Hughes
American intellectuals seem to feel that they have a greater and more special stake in Presidential elections since Stevenson’s first candidacy made the “egghead” a political issue. The extent of that stake at the present moment, and in connection with the present campaign, is what, among other things, H. Stuart Hughes considers here.
George Lichtheim
George Lichtheim continues his running interpretation of events in the Middle East storm center with an analysis of the current Suez crisis.
Edmund Wilson
In this essay on philo-Semitism in America, Edmund Wilson finds the feelings of Americans of Puritan stock peculiarly engaged by Jews and Judaism.
William and Sarah C. Schack
The starkest, most vivid accounts of the Nazi slaughter of Jewish communities are to be found in the hundreds of privately printed chronicles called yizkor (memorial) books, compiled by survivors of the catastrophe.
Benjamin Rivlin
Newly independent Morocco and Tunisia are undergoing a transition in which much seems confused, but there is a pattern to the confusion, as Benjamin Rivlin shows here.
Reader Letters
Excerpts from the debate between Rabbi Moses ben Nachman and Fra Paulo Christiani on the messiah.
Arnold Sherman
An interview with English poet Robert Graves.
Morroe Berger
Continuing the discussion of social mobility which has been a feature of this department for several years, Morroe Berger looks into the social backgrounds and changed character and functions of America’s top executives.
Reviewed by Clement Greenberg
Reviewed by Maurice Goldbloom
Reviewed by Jacob Neusner
Reviewed by Louis Finkelstein
Reviewed by Irving Feldman
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Benzion Kagannoff's September 1956 article, "Jewish Surnames Through the Ages."
Reader Letters
An exchange between Arnold Sherman and readers on his profile of Robert Graves.
Reader Letters
An exchange between Werner Cohn and readers on his September 1956 reviews of Lawrence Fuchs's "The Political Behavior of American Jews."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Edmund Wilson's October 1956 piece "Notes on Gentile Pro-Semitism."
Bernard W. Wishy
This century has witnessed a phenomenal growth in the authority and responsibilities of the office of Chief Executive; the necessities of the time appear to require a strong President. But traditional American sentiment still remains hostile to strong executive power.
Lucy S. Dawidowicz
What kind of future can the Jewish religion look forward to in Soviet Russia?
Maurice Goldbloom
Maurice Goldbloom on security.
John Berryman
Popular both with a wide audience and with serious critics in his own lifetime, Ring Lardner —along with many other prominent writers of the 1920’s—fell into undue neglect a few years after his death. John Berryman here considers the peculiarly American quality of Lardner’s life and work and tries to assess his importance.
William and Sarah C. Schack
Last month, in the first half of this two-part article on the yizkor (memorial) books—the privately printed volumes compiled by survivors of the Nazi massacres to commemorate their destroyed communities of East Europe—William and Sarah Schack, basing themselves on a typical yizkor book, Pinkas Byten (The Book of Byten, published in Buenos Aires by Die Bytener Landsleit of Argentina), described the life of the Jews of Byten, located in that part of White Russia which was incorporated in the revived state of Poland after World War I, up to the eve of the German invasion. The second part of the story takes up at the point where rumors had begun to circulate in Byten that the Nazis had been wiping out whole villages as they advanced, and had slaughtered thousands of Jews in Slonim, the “big city” of the area.
Oded Remba
Much has changed in Israel in the eight years since its founding, and much has been accomplished, but one problem remains the same: how to achieve economic independence.
Edouard Roditi
A number of novels about French Jewish life have been creating a stir in France, and Edouard Roditi looks into them to see what they betoken.
Reader Letters
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES proved a prophet when he said, "For the rational study of the law the black-letter
Stanley Edgar Hyman
DAVID DAICHES'S essay in auto- biography comes subtitled "A Jew- ish Childhood in Edinburgh," and its
William Petersen
IN THE United States, the assimilation of immigrants was a subject of great con- cern in the early 1920's.
Reviewed by Nathan Glazer
Reviewed by Lillian Blumberg McCall
Reviewed by Seymour Martin Lipset
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Stanley Edgard Hyman's November 1956 piece "The 'Two Worlds' of David Daiches."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Edmund Wilson's October 1956 piece "Notes on Gentile Pro-Semitism."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Hal Lehrman's February 1956 piece "Three Weeks in Cairo."
Reader Letters
Letters in response to Benzion C. Kaganoff's September 1956 article "Jewish Surnames Through the Ages."
Hal Lehrman
With George Lichtheim elsewhere in this issue discussing the Mideast crisis as seen from London, and Ray Alan dealing with it from the vantage point of Cyprus, Hal Lehrman here rounds out Commentary’s coverage of the issues involved with a first-hand report of views, opinions, and policies in high places in Washington.
George Lichtheim
George Lichtheim reports on the Mideast crisis from London.
Ray Alan
Ray Alan on the Middle East.
Hugh Seton-Watson
Hugh Seton-Watson on Eastern Europe.
G. F. Hudson
With Jawaharlal Nehru scheduled to visit Washington this month, it is hoped that G. F. Hudson’s essay on the enigma of the Indian Prime Minister will serve a purpose of practical as well as purely intellectual understanding.
James Rorty
Since the late Huey Long departed this world in a blaze of ambiguous gunfire, our professional rabble-rousers have been a singularly untalented lot. Can this judgment be safely extended to include Frederick John Kasper?
Jakob J. Petuchowski
Erich Fromm’s "The Art of Loving" is a psychoanalyst’s view of love, but Jakob J. Petuchowski here finds it also a profoundly Jewish book.
Alan Benjamin
Alan Benjamin on mourning
Hermann Cohen
The following excerpt forms the conclusion to Cohen’s monumental posthumous "Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums."
Steven Marcus
Steven Marcus here reviews A. J. Liebling’s "The Sweet Science."
Norman Birnbaum
The World Congress of Sociology, which met late in August of this year in Amsterdam, if it did nothing else, may have shocked some of the participating sociologists into practicing their discipline on themselves. The Congress began as a venture in science. It developed into a conflict of ideology.
Reviewed by Irving Kristol
Reviewed by Milton Hindus
Reviewed by Heinz Politzer
1956
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