Wicked Son – serie

The West’s current crisis of order traces back to one fateful loss: the biblical tradition of liberty under the law that once sustained it.Why is the West tearing itself apart? From campus protests and climate apocalypticism to the delegitimization of Israel and the hollowing out of democratic institutions, the patterns of moral and political disintegration have become unmistakable. In The Hebraic Thread, Alan Bekhor traces this crisis to its deepest roots. Bekhor argues that the Anglophone world’s distinctive achievement—a morally accountable pluralism grounded in law, covenant, and divine accountability—arose from a tradition he calls Christian Hebraism, forged by thinkers like Hobbes and Locke from the political theology of the Hebrew Bible. This tradition sustained Great Britain and America as centers of a free world order for centuries. Beginning with Spinoza’s radical break from biblical theology, an alternative trajectory took hold on the European continent—one that displaced revelation with reason, covenant with ideology, and law with the unchecked sovereignty of the human will. Through the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, Bekhor traces the philosophical genealogy of today’s antinomian movements. In the book’s final section, Bekhor finds unexpected allies in postmodern thinkers such as Freud, Wittgenstein, Levinas, and Derrida, whose work revives the philosophical space for Hebraic themes of language, interpretation, and moral responsibility. The result is a bold call to recover the religious and intellectual foundations without which liberty, law, and Western civilization cannot endure.

The full and untold story of Israeli politics penned by one of Israel’s most distinguished political journalists.“The phones had been installed in every corner of the apartment, and all started ringing at once. Golda Meir knew exactly what the sound meant—but she was afraid to pick up. Then she woke up with a jolt, covered in a cold sweat. It was 4 AM, and she could not get back to sleep.”In A Call at 4 AM, Israel’s top political journalist, Amit Segal, takes you inside the moments when history was decided in real time. From Golda Meir’s sleepless nights before the Yom Kippur War to Benjamin Netanyahu’s power struggles during missile attacks, Segal uncovers the untold stories of war rooms, last-minute deals, and the relentless pressure of governing a country that never knows a quiet day.Through gripping storytelling and unprecedented access, Segal reveals how Israel’s leaders navigate wars, terror waves, and global crises—while constantly fighting for their own political survival. What happens behind closed doors when a prime minister must decide whether to strike Iran? How do backroom betrayals and coalition battles shape military decisions? And why, in Israel, is every political crisis also a national emergency?Witty, fast-paced, and packed with revelations, A Call at 4 AM is the closest you’ll ever get to standing in the prime minister’s shoes when the phone rings—and the fate of Israel is on the line.

A soaring, heart-wrenching, and hopeful family memoir of a mostly-forgotten Middle Eastern Jewish community.After dwelling for centuries on the poverty-stricken fringes of Yemeni society, the desert nation’s proud Jewish community was forced to emigrate, en masse, to Israel soon after that nation’s founding. In this deeply personal and historically rich family memoir, Naomi Kehati Bronner opens a window into the unique world in which her parents grew up—a Yemini-Jewish world whose ways remained virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages.Suddenly finding themselves forcibly thrust into the modern world, Kehati Bronner’s parents and their immigrant community struggle to adjust and assimilate, while still raising their children to remember and honor their ancient traditions. Her own deeply personal story of assimilation, reinvention, and self-discovery not only sheds light on the complexity of modern Israel, but mirrors the immigrant journey of countless people around the world—and in the case of Jews, Israel’s powerful role in providing a new sense of peoplehood.

Winner of the 2026 Bernstein Prize A powerful, firsthand account of a woman’s fifty-day struggle to protect three generations of her family while held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.For fifty days, Dr. Shoshan Haran was held captive alongside her family—including her three-year-old granddaughter—under the constant threat of terrorists and the horror of IDF bombardments.After their release, words began to pour out of her. Mission in Captivity is a story of physical and psychological survival in a place where the threat of death looms over every moment. It is an account of the determination to look pure evil in the eye through long, harrowing conversations with her captors.This firsthand account also documents the ongoing struggle to return all the hostages, describes the depths of entrenched hatred within Gaza, and issues a wake-up call to the free world to act against a murderous ideology that threatens its very existence. Mission in Captivity is a powerful testament, written with a sensitive hand, that will haunt the reader long after the final page.

An unprecedented, large-scale collection of timely and provocative essays from a wide range of Jewish thought leaders that aims to start a global conversation among Jews about their future as a people.“…a mind-expanding look at how Judaism can survive and thrive in the 21st century.” –Publishers Weekly Imagine having the entire Jewish people over for dinner—and hosting a raucous, creative, riveting debate about their collective future. Jewish Priorities offers, for the first time, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and genuinely “pan-Jewish” conversation. Encompassing more than sixty top authors from around the Jewish world—Israelis and Diaspora writers; younger influencers and veteran opinion leaders; rabbinic and communal leaders, journalists and scholars, and literary and cultural figures, ranging from secular to ultra-Orthodox—each contributor offers a different priority for the Jewish people. In the process, Jewish Priorities captures the tremendous breadth, depth, and passionate commitment that has long defined this unique community in history. These essays are all original and come from some of our greatest luminaries—thought leaders like Natan Sharansky, Dara Horn, Yossi Klein Halevi, Ruth Wisse, Shaul Magid, David Wolpe, Fania Oz-Salzberger, and many more. Their topics vary widely, from Zionism and antisemitism to education and philanthropy; from the Holocaust to Jewish intimacy; from the quest for God to the failure of Jewish institutions, to the best way to study the Torah in an age of viral videos. Jewish Priorities offers an unprecedented snapshot of the cultural, political, and religious currents driving an entire generation of Jews—but also the deepest aspirations and dreams of this beautiful, unique people at a pivotal moment in our history.