Members of the Scribe
On Writing a Fictionalized Account of Baruch Spinoza’s Family
I’ve often been asked both by journalists and by my readers why my novel The Elixir of Immortality tells the ...
A Jewish Family Tree: The Genesis of The Elixir of Immortality
I left Stockholm in the fall of 1998 and moved to Oslo, for I had discovered the neighboring land’s greatest ...
Never Alone, Never Lonely
Books have always fascinated me, even from the very earliest days of my childhood. As the child of Jewish intellectuals ...
The Balabusta Gene
Some folks are born with the balabusta gene and others are not. It’s that simple. If you didn’t happen to grow up ...
Confessions of a Jewish Bride
I’ll confess right off that this is not my most embarrassing culinary moment, because I actually air the worst ones in my ...
A Magical Mother, Golems, and Surprising History
My mother always told us she could do magic. And though my sisters and I were modern children of the ...
How Judaism Became the Foundation of My Memoir
The one thing that has really shocked me about my new book is how Jewish it is.I’m a nonobservant Jew, ...
Who Wrote the Story of Abraham and Isaac?
“I didn’t think he’d do it. I really didn’t think he would.” That’s how I open my book, with ...
Understanding Genesis 22: God and Child Sacrifice
Like many people I know, I first heard the story of Abraham and Isaac as a child. I couldn’t have been older ...
The Ultimate Sacrifice: James Goodman on Abraham and the Binding of Isaac
Many people ask me, “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a field like this?” By which they mean: ...