Corey Robin's Blog

My wife and I saw the new Leni Riefenstahl documentary this weekend. Compared to the documentary from the early 1990s, “The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl,” the new one falls short. Though stylishly made, it doesn’t break much new ground, and in certain ways, fails to do what the earlier documentary did: Explain why people are so fascinated by Riefenstahl in the first place. The first documentary devotes a good chunk of the film to explaining how pioneering were Riefensthal’s techniques, how innovative her approach to film and propaganda. It’s only by appreciating her filmic achievements that we can wrestle with what a monster she was. The original film quotes her saying something to the effect that people are […]

In shul yesterday, as we headed into the second half of Deuteronomy, we happened on some of those passages that contain one of the invocations of Amalek that Netanyahu made famous after October 7: “Remember what Amalek did to you.” “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek.” These and another passage were mentioned by Netanyahu and a great many other right-wing Zionists to justify and explain the slaughter of Palestinians that ensued in response to the attacks of October 7. But there are two fascinating wrinkles in the Parsha that complicate that simple story. First, the injunction to destroy Amalek comes after a whole series of other injunctions that are designed to turn the Israelites into a civilized, moral […]

News from the world that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are making for us.

Until 2006, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch was chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which is the leading academic and rabbinical training institute for Conservative Judaism. Which is all the more reason to be surprised, even shocked, by what he says in this interview with Peter Beinart. You have to understand the position of the JTS within American, even international Jewry, and the rabbinate it produces, to grapple with the full weight of Rabbi Schorsch’s statement. And know that he’s now 89 years old, and what it must be like, to have lived a full Jewish life to that age, to have survived and been a refugee from Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, to have created this world of rabbinic Judaism in the […]

I love magazines like The Atlantic. Ever since its editors first heard murmurings of a possible victory by Zohran Mamdani, the magazine has been running one anti-Mamdani article after another, with titles and claims like these: But now, having lapped this one field of propaganda, the magazine has decided to launch itself on a different course. On today’s website, I read a lengthy attack on the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization from which Mamdani hails. Pining for the days of Michael Harrington—when the organization had 7% of the membership it has today—the magazine declares that the problem with DSA is that it is not more like Mamdani, who knows how to build bridges, turn windy ideology into plain talk, […]

Caleb Crain has a lovely post on re-reading Moby Dick for the umpteenth time, but in his 50s. He writes: What’s it like to read Moby-Dick when you’re Ahab’s age? There are probably a number of things I no longer see as acutely as when I had young eyes, but some elements are now in sharper focus. When young, I had only the vaguest sense, in any given chapter, where Ishmael was, geographically speaking. For me then, the important seas to be swimming through were of metaphor and feeling. Now I see that Melville is actually pretty careful to map the Pequod’s journey; in late middle age, my internal GPS module keeps better track of where I as a reader […]

I’m about to say something that may not land well with my usual readers who are opposed to the State of Israel. But I think it’s true. We often compare Israel to settler colonial states. Increasingly the comparisons have been made to fascist movements and states, even Nazi Germany. I’d like to suggest a different comparison, which may help make better sense not of Israel itself but of its supporters, particularly the ones I know best, here in the United States. I’d compare those supporters to the true believers on the left, who supported the Soviet Union between the 1930s and 1950s, often even afterward. I’m not the first to make this comparison; Tony Judt did before his death in […]

I just spent the last three or four hours in one of the worst reading experiences of my life. Don’t get me wrong: The book was awesome. But it was so upsetting that, 30 minutes after finishing it, my heartbeat is still racing with horror and revulsion. And this during a year when I’ve read too many books about Nazi Germany, ancient and modern slavery, and 1100 pages of Sven Beckert on the history of capitalism. None of those reading experiences compares to the throbbing disturbance of this book. So what is it? Elias Canetti’s Kafka’s Other Trial. It’s about Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer, to whom he was engaged, I think, twice, and how those letters provide the raw […]

In early modern Venice and Florence, a new form of pooling capital emerged. It was called the “compagnia,” which translates into English as “company.” The literal meaning of the word is “with bread.” Why and how does “with bread” produce a notion of pooling capital and our modern word for an economic enterprise? Because those capital-pooling efforts were often family efforts. The early modern Italian usage points us forward and backward in time. Forward because, in recent years, there’s been a big literature on the rise or return of “family capitalism” or “dynastic capitalism” or “patrimonial capitalism.” Where the 20th century was supposed to be the realm of the managerial corporation, with control and ownership separated, and ownership in the […]

In early modern Venice and Florence, a new form of pooling capital emerged. It was called the “compagnia,” which translates into English as “company.” The literal meaning of the word is “with bread.” Why and how does “with bread” produce a notion of pooling capital and our modern word for an economic enterprise? Because those capital-pooling efforts were often family efforts. The early modern Italian usage points us forward and backward in time. Forward because, in recent years, there’s been a big literature on the rise or return of “family capitalism” or “dynastic capitalism” or “patrimonial capitalism.” Where the 20th century was supposed to be the realm of the managerial corporation, with control and ownership separated, and ownership in the […]