When You’re Not in Control of Your Life
This week’s Jewish holiday reminds us that the line between our success and failure is thinner and more fragile than we like to think.
What I Told Congress Today About Anti-Semitism
How to understand anti-Jewish prejudice in terms of principle rather than partisanship
Putting Shakespeare on Trial in His Own Anti-Semitic Play
A new off-Broadway production masterfully recasts the playwright as the villain of “The Merchant of Venice”
Ben Platt on Judaism, Anti-Semitism, and Dying Onstage
The Tony-winning star of Broadway’s Parade discusses a story for our moment told 25 years too soon
What to Read on Holocaust Remembrance Day
A few selections on the human, statistical, and moral dimensions of an incalculable crime
I’m an accidental journalist, connoisseur of conspiracy theories, and recovering internet addict who fell into this work when I discovered that people were inexplicably willing to pay me to say things I wanted to say anyway. Over the past decade, I’ve covered everything from elections in America and Israel, to the translation of Harry Potter into Yiddish, to Muslims and Jews in comic books, to anti-Mormonism in American politics, to religious Jews in baseball. Before that, I studied history and Jewish studies at Harvard, where I was the movies editor of the school paper. (Professionally, it’s all been downhill from there.) These days, I live in New York with my family, and in my spare time, I compose and sing original Jewish music and create bots that troll anti-Semites on Twitter.