Liel Leibovitz

Though they probably don’t realize it, many Americans spent the tail end of 2024 engaged in a serious theological debate about the nature of evil. This being America, the discussion was held not in seminar rooms but at the multiplex, where viewers were entertained by two drastically divergent . . . . Continue Reading »

A woman, sitting behind the wheel of her car, is hollering. She’s alternating between “why, why, why,” and “no, no, no,” all at the top of her lungs while slamming her fist against the steering wheel. Another is staring defiantly at the camera, like a TikTok Joan of Arc, while a . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m a great lover of the English language, but I must confess that, lately, I’ve come to dread three words in particular. You hear them everywhere—at dinner, at the office coffee corner, in line to pick up the children from school. There’s always someone walking about half-dazed and . . . . Continue Reading »

I was recently sipping on chocolat chaud while visiting Paris, observing life leisurely unfurling in the charming Place des Vosges. I found myself contemplating a very difficult question. Like everything of consequence in French culture, that jewel of Western civilization, this question, . . . . Continue Reading »

How to make sense of the upcoming presidential election? Those of us reared on reason, logic, and basic human decency find ourselves a bit befuddled these days, trying to make sense of what is rapidly devolving into a Grand Guignol of political, moral, and cultural horrors. As if the elevation of an . . . . Continue Reading »

Once upon a time, in a faraway place called Brooklyn, there lived a museum director named Anne Pasternak. Because she was a member of America’s self-appointed cultural elite, she liked to travel to trendy places like Aspen and make sweeping statements about art and society. If we don’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Good news, fellow Americans: It’s civil war time! The violence, praise the Lord, unfurls exclusively on the silver screen, where the tortured protagonists of Alex Garland’s new blockbuster—unimprovably named Civil War—watch America being torn apart in a hail of bullets. Who’s . . . . Continue Reading »

The central commandment found in American etiquette Torah is this old chestnut: Never discuss religion or politics. Do so, and you run the risk of offending those who hold different views. This is a grave sin, because polite society, after all, is an ideal predicated on the polite fiction that . . . . Continue Reading »

The other month, I attended a conference thick with members of the clergy. It had everything you would expect: bad bagels for breakfast, a hurried nondenominational prayer to kick things off, and meeting rooms stacked with priests, rabbis, and imams grateful for a day off from the pulpit. I didn’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Earlier this year, a Seattle-based journalist named Tariq Ra’ouf took to social media to explain the logic behind the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been rocking American cities for months. “We are going to inconvenience every single person who doesn’t give a f**k until they give a . . . . Continue Reading »