Members of the Scribe
The Best Place on Earth
A few weeks ago I was asked to provide a blurb for an about-to-be-published collection of short stories, The Best Place ...
How I Became an Illustrator
When Edgar asked me to illustrate the text of The Bronfman Haggadah , which at that point he had been ...
Deciding to Forgo Research
One of the great pleasures of writing for me is researching historical events and details that help me understand and ...
A Departure From the Traditional: The Bronfman Haggadah
When I set out to create the illustrations for The Bronfman Haggadah , I knew I wanted it to be ...
Whose Story Is It?
The first step for me in writing fiction is deciding which of my characters is telling the story. I might ...
Why it Matters that Marshall was Never Nominated for the Supreme Court
The main challenge I faced when preparing a biography of Louis Marshall stemmed from the gap between the perceptual confidence that characterizes ...
Transforming the Magical
We were sitting in an upscale café in Northern Tel Aviv waiting to meet with Knesset member Yitzchak “Bougie” Herzog. ...
Can Israel Help American Jews Recall Their Own Forgotten Heroes?
Now that my previous blog established to everyone’s complete satisfaction that Louis Marshall ought to be considered a paramount figure in the ...
Obsession in Blue
We admit it, we are obsessed with blue. Also with seashells and snails. Our house is filled with skeins of ...
Ten Percent of American Jewry’s Top 100 List
Here’s a thought experiment designed to show you how the Jewish world does not work today. Imagine that some extremely ...
Places Never Seen
My most recently published novel, The Other Side of the World, contains a 100-page novel-within-the-novel set entirely in Singapore and Borneo. The ...
Interview: Ben Katchor and Hand-Drying in America
Eddy Portnoy sat down with Ben Katchor to discuss his newest book, Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories, which will be published by Pantheon ...