The November/December issue of Moment Magazine, where I practice my editorial magic, is out on newsstands. My five picks for the foreign policy crowd are:
*In her first Moment column, Fania Oz-Salzberger, director of the Posen Research Forum for Political Thought at the University of Haifa (and yes, daughter of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz), introduces Middle Israel. "Like a great number of fellow Israelis, I am secular, Jewish and liberal, make a decent living and lead a global life. In other words, most television viewers around the world have probably never heard of me," she writes.
*The cover story, "Meet Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz (aka Jon Stewart)," profiles the very funny and quintessentially Jewish host of The Daily Show. Last year, a Pew survey found Stewart to be one of the most admired journalists in America, tied at number four with news legends Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw. This year, The New York Times asked: "Is Jon Stewart the most trusted man in America?"
*Jeremy Gillick talks to Indian-American journalist Asra Nomani, who founded The Pearl Project at Georgetown University to investigate the 2002 murder of her friend and Wall Street Journal colleague Daniel Pearl. "The darkest interpretation of Islamic theology sent me into the abyss through Danny's murder. I realized that as long as moderate-minded people like me didn't challenge radical and violent interpretations of our faith, they would prevail. Everybody in every faith has to stand up for principles of moderation, inclusion and tolerance if we stand a chance of defeating principles of violence, intolerance and injustice," Nomani says.
*Elie Wiesel, Eric Kandel, Avram Hershko and other Nobel laureates reflect on the favorite Jewish books. I was most moved by Kandel's response:
What I find particularly profound about Night is Wiesel's handling of a theme that later was to dominate 20th century thought: the death of God, the Father. This is symbolized in two ways. The death of God is symbolized by the slow hanging of a young Jewish boy, a hanging which cannot help but draw parallels in our mind to the slow death through the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, in a curious way, there is an intermingling of Jewish and Christian themes, whether conscious or unconscious. The death of the Father is symbolized by the death of Eliezer's actual father as well as by the complex and brutally honest depiction of the reversal of the typical father-son relationship, with the son protecting and caring for the father. The book creates a consistent and unified mood and one comes away with a powerful message of the concentration camp experience: We cannot rely on God. We cannot rely on the Father. We have only ourselves.
*Renowned cookbook author Joan Nathan reviews Maria Balinska's The Bagel, which traces the history of this humble bread. "Balinska found evidence from the 9th century that might explain why bagel dough is boiled before it is baked. A Polish decree of the time forbade Jews to bake bread because of the connection between bread and the body of Jesus Christ. But if dough was boiled first and then baked, it didn't fall into the same category as bread and could be made and consumed," Nathan writes. Who knew?
Also, I'd like to invite all Women and Foreign Policy readers to Moment's December 9th New York City event with Geradine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March and People of the Book. The event is free, but registration is required. I hope that you'll enjoy the issue and would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. See you in bagel-friendly Big Apple!
