Members of the Scribe

Torah On Board

It wasn’t the first time I traveled in a car with a Torah, but I’d never actually put one in ...

A Book and Its Translators

It was a freezing afternoon outside Warsaw in March 2012, and I was sitting in a cramped hut listening to ...

Jewish History and Jewish Memory

On the first day of “The History of the Jews in Eastern Europe,” my college professor explained the tension between ...

My Favorite Episodes in Helena Rubinstein’s Biography

It’s difficult to choose only one—she led such an amazing life! The first that springs to mind, though, is the ...

My Favorite Wandering Jews

I grew up assuming that the Wandering Jew was a Jewish creation, our metaphor for the Diaspora. When I began ...

On Trailing the Life of Helena Rubinstein

Helena Rubinstein wrote—or rather commissioned—two autobiographies that merely serve to perpetuate her legend, and therefore cannot really be trusted… But ...

On Writing a Biography of Helena Rubinstein

People always ask me the same question: “What made you want to write about Helena Rubinstein?” And the answer is always ...

Crypto-Jews and Autobiographical Animals

Maxim D. Shrayer: Papa, I want to ask you about varieties of crypto-Jews—those who conceal their Judaism in order to preserve ...

My Name is Yusha

Any run-in with a Russian bathhouse is bound to shock: men chugging bottles of beer-like kvass, felt hats helping them ...

A Jewish-Russian Writer as New Englander

Maxim D. Shrayer: Papa, let’s continue with our topic. What happens after a Jewish writer emigrates from the USSR to the ...