Fathom – Topic – Book Reviews

Book Review | Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel

By Michael Allen
700 British artists have announced that they are boycotting Israel until the ‘colonial oppression of Palestinians’ ends. In... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

By David Cesarani
Historian David Cesarani hails Alon Confino’s triumphant demonstration that anti-Jewish policies are within the realms of comprehension and... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism

By Dave Rich
First, the disclosure: Ben Cohen is a friend and comrade who was kind enough to invite me to... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel

By Robert Fine
It is a feature of our times that certain aspects of what Israel has become – notably its... Read more > Autumn 2014

Jerusalem Solitudes in Early Hebrew Literature

By Noga Emanuel
As the spiritual bedrock of Judaism, Jerusalem had been a magnet for millennial longing. For centuries Jews intensely... Read more > Spring 2014

East meets West in film

By Yair Raveh
It is not only in politics and the street that Israel’s ethnic tensions surface. Our film reviewer Yair... Read more > Spring 2014

Finding the Words: a review essay

By Liam Hoare
Books under review: Falling Out of Time David Grossman, Jonathan Cape, 2014, pp.208; Neuland, Eshkol Nevo, Chatto &... Read more > Spring 2014

Film Review: Bethlehem vs. Omar

By Yair Raveh
The media pitted one against the other. It was indeed a catchy story: two films from two sides... Read more > Winter 2014

Do look back: Lou Reed’s Jewish soul music

By Steven Lee Beeber
When I was writing my book about the Jewish origins of punk, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s, I referred... Read more > Winter 2014

Sakhir the Rock Opera: an interview with Yariv Ben-Yehuda

By Yariv Ben-Yehuda
Yariv Ben-Yehuda is the co-creator, along with Erez Cohen of the rock opera Sakhir, a high-octane romp through... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One

By Andrei S. Markovits
Growing up in the West Romanian town of Timisoara in the 1950s as the only child of a... Read more > Autumn 2013

The Making of Within the Eye of the Storm: an interview with Bassam Aramin, Rami Elhanan and Shelley Hermon

By Alan Johnson
Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, a Palestinian and Israeli, were once dedicated fighters willing to kill and be... Read more > Autumn 2013

Letting the right one in: the rise of the Israeli horror film

By Yair Raveh
This has got to be the most surprising, and thrilling, of all trends to have ever emerged in... Read more > Autumn 2013

Israeli cinema: gay but not queer

By Yair Raveh
Israeli cinema has been more mainstream and gay than subversive and queer. But that may be about to... Read more > Summer 2013

Can two walk together?

By A.B Yehoshua
An extract from a play by A.B. Yehoshua. Translated by David Janner-Klausner and adapted for stage by Amy... Read more > Spring 2013

Israel reinvents the documentary

By Yair Raveh
The Gatekeepers is a masterpiece in a landmark year for Israeli documentaries. The last fifteen years have seen... Read more > Spring 2013

Deathbed the Musical

By Liat Har-Gil
Israeli animation graduate Liat Har-Gil from Rosh Ha’ayen won the 2012 Faith Shorts, the global film competition of... Read more > Spring 2013

The making of the law in these parts: an interview with director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz

By Ra'anan Alexandrowicz
The Israeli documentary The Law in these Parts won the Sundance 2012 World Cinema Grand Jury Documentary Prize... Read more > Spring 2013

The Making of The Gatekeepers: an interview with Dror Moreh

By Dror Moreh
Dror Moreh is the director of the Academy Award nominated Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers, a rare insight into... Read more > Spring 2013

Book Review: Spies Against Armageddon

By Ephraim Kahana
Inside Israel’s secret wars 22 years after the release of their best seller The Imperfect Spies, Yossi Melman and... Read more > Winter 2013

Book Review | Global Palestine

By Philip Spencer
The central argument of this book is that the question of Palestine is fundamentally a global question, indeed... Read more > Winter 2013

Book Review: Israel and the European Left

By Ezra Mendelsohn
Shindler offers a valuable account of the rise and rise of anti-Zionism within the European Left. At the... Read more > Winter 2013