ARTICLES
“J. Courtney Sullivan returns with ‘The Cliffs,’ ghosts included.” The Washington Post. July 13, 2024.
"Julia Phillips's second novel, 'Bear,' starts slow but nails the ending." The Boston Globe. June 26, 2024.
“How to Transcend Death in Muriel Barbery’s ‘One Hour of Fervor.’” The Boston Globe. January 24, 2024.
“The Creature Eating Its Tail.” The American Scholar. January 15, 2024.
“Siddhartha's 100th Birthday.” Lion's Roar. July 26, 2023.
“From Mandate to Nation State: How a failed Arab rebellion ensured Israel’s survival.” The American Scholar. March 6, 2023.
“The roots of Israel’s current chaos in a potent new historical noir.” The Los Angeles Times. February 22, 2023.
“Review: ‘Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers’ by Emma Smith.” Minneapolis StarTribune. November 18, 2022.
“Are We Approaching the Singularity of John Banville?” The Boston Globe. October 20, 2022.
“Close the Methadone Clinics at Mass. and Cass.” The Boston Globe. September 5, 2022.
“Zeal of the Convert.” The American Scholar. September 1, 2022.
“It’s Not Me, It’s You: On Sloane Crosley’s Cult Classic.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. August 3, 2022.
“Emmanuel Carrèrre's new meditation memoir has an NDA-sized hole at its center." The Los Angeles Times. July 26, 2022.
“Conversations with Israeli Legend Amos Oz.” A Review of “What Makes an Apple?” by Amos Oz and Shira Hadad. The Jerusalem Post. June 8, 2022.
“Love and time travel in Emma Straub’s ‘This Time Tomorrow.’” The Boston Globe. May 12, 2022.
“Does moral behavior come from the Bible or the brain?” The Jerusalem Post. May 7, 2022.
“Kerouac at 100.” The American Scholar. March 10, 2022.
“Review: ‘Jena: 1800,’ by Peter Neumann.” Minneapolis Star Tribune. February 25, 2022.
“A Nobel Prize Winner’s Massive Historical Epic is an Irreverent Epiphany.” The Los Angeles Times. February 3, 2022.
“150 Years of Excavating Jerusalem: A Rich Layer Cake.” The Jerusalem Post. December 30, 2021.
“Can Meditation Actually Be Dangerous?” Buddhadharma. Winter 2021 issue. December 17, 2021.
“Tales of Mercy and Sacrifice.” The American Scholar. Winter 2021 issue. December 1, 2021.
“An Infuriating Indictment of Israel.” The Washington Post. November 5, 2021.
“The Formation of a Neo-Nazi: On Sjón’s ‘Red Milk.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. October 27, 2021.
“Learning about life’s complexities and religion through writing.” (A review of Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You.”) The Jerusalem Post. September 30, 2021.
“Can fiction tell the truth about a life?” (A review of Joshua Ferris’s A Calling for Charlie Barnes.) The Boston Globe. September 23, 2021.
“Waking from Dreams: Haruki Murakami’s Short Stories.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. May 26, 2021.
“Rachel Cusk’s ‘Second Place’ goes to some profoundly insightful places.” The Washington Post. April 4, 2021.
“Francis Story and the Case for Rebirth.” Lion’s Roar. April 27, 2021.
“Reflections on Myanmar.” Lion’s Roar. February 16, 2021.
“Who Chopped Off the Priest’s Nob?” The Los Angeles Review of Books. December 25, 2020.
“The Root of Zen: An Interview with David Hinton.” Lion’s Roar. December 4, 2020.
“A Journey to the Idea of North: On Hari Kunzru’s “Red Pill.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. November 18, 2020.
“Not ‘The Plague’ but ‘Notes from Underground.’” The Lost Angeles Review of Books. October 17, 2020.
“Understanding What We’re Made Of.” Lion’s Roar. June 17, 2020.
“Contemplating gods and hunters, guilt and theater.” The Washington Post. May 28, 2020.
“Mystery and #MeToo in Sara Sligar’s ‘Take Me Apart.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. May 20, 2020.
“God Enraged.” The American Scholar. April 29, 2020.
“Heaven and Hell: New History of the Afterlife Shows the Origins of the Idea.” Jerusalem Post. April 23, 2020.
“The Coronavirus Forces Us to Fix the Flaws in Our Food Supply System.” Buddhist Global Relief. April 17, 2020.
“Searching for Amos Oz in Jerusalem.” The American Scholar. March 2, 2020.
“Review: ‘Pravda Ha Ha’ by Rory MacLean.” The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. January 10, 2020.
“The art and ambiguity of the world’s scriptures.” The Washington Post. December 20, 2019.
“Lying the Truth with Emmanuel Carrére.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. December 14, 2019.
“Everything but Borscht: Exploring the Ambiguities of Russia with Sara Wheeler and Ethan Pollock.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. November 5, 2019.
“What About Eating Animals, Greta?” The Los Angeles Review of Books. November 5, 2019.
“Is Buddhism Violent?” Lion’s Roar. November 1, 2019.
“Taking Food out of Poor Kids’ Mouths.” Buddhist Global Relief. August 9, 2019.
“Love and Fate: Are They Prisons We Can Never Escape?” The New York Times. July 9, 2019.
“Review ‘The Porpoise,’ by Mark Haddon.” Minneapolis Star Tribune. June 28, 2019.
“They were Bosnian refugees. But to Aleksandar Hemon, they’re ‘My Parents.’” The Los Angeles Times. June 11, 2019.
“Fate and Misogyny: On Julia Phillips’s ‘Disappearing Earth’.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. May 21, 2019.
“The Politics of Happiness: An Essay on the Global Happiness Conference.” Buddhist Global Relief. May 14, 2019.
“A Knack for Embracing Impermanence: On Pico Iyer’s ‘Autumn Light.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. April 16, 2019.
“In ‘kaddish.com’ an Unpleasing Blend of Sacred and Mundane.” The Boston Globe. April, 11, 2019.
“Why we need to pay attention to the rise of anti-Semitism in America now.” The Washington Post. February 15, 2019.
“Review: ‘Ghost Wall,’ by Sarah Moss.” The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. January 11, 2019.
“Comparing the Bible’s mercurial God with the Koran’s grandfatherly Allah.” The Washington Post. January 10, 2019.
“The Case Against ‘Buddhism.’” Lion’s Roar. December 18, 2018.
“Review: ‘The End of the End of the Earth,’ essays by Jonathan Franzen.” The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. December 17, 2018.
“Art and Enchantment in Haruki Murakami’s ‘Killing Commendatore.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. October, 23, 2018.
On Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray. The New York Journal of Books. October 2, 2018.
On Dog Symphony by Sam Munson. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune. August 24, 2018.
“Does Dispassion Belong in the Bedroom?” Tricycle Magazine. August 10, 2018.
“The Fantastic World of Laura van den Berg.” The Washington Post. July 19, 2018.
On Evolutions: Fifteen Myths that Explain Our World by Oren Harman. The New York Journal of Books. July 19, 2018.
“What’s the Connection between Buddhism and Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar?” Lion’s Roar. July 17, 2018.
“Reducing Your Global Footprint through Change of Diet” Buddhist Global Relief. July 8, 2018.
“Lamentations of the Woman: Irreverent Feminism in Therese Bohman's 'Eventide.’” The Los Angeles Review of Books. April 18, 2018.
“How the Exodus Really Happened, According to a New Theory by Israel Knohl.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. March 29, 2018.
On Silence by Erling Kagge. The Los Angeles Review of Books. December 20, 2017.
On God: A Human History by Reza Aslan. The Los Angeles Review of Books. December 12, 2017.
“Teffi, Rasputin, and the Revolution." Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Autumn/Winter 2017.
“Stranger in a Strange Land: Looking for the Man Who Took Kabbalah Mainstream.” The Washington Post. May 5, 2017.
On Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror by Victor Sebestyen. The New York Journal of Books. November 7, 2017.
On The Dharma of the Princess Bride by Ethan Nichtern. The Los Angeles Review of Books. September 11, 2017.
“Things That Happened Before the Earthquake: A Novel by Chiara Barzini.” The New York Journal of Books. August 14, 2017.
“Righteousness as Commitment” on Jonathan Safran Foer's Here I Am. Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Spring/Summer 2017.
“Compass by Mathais Énard.” The New York Journal of Books. April 7, 2017.
“The Kingdom by Emmanuel Carrere.” The New York Journal of Books. March 16, 2017.
“Interview with Kelly Luce.” Bookforum. March 3, 2017.
“Letters to a Young Muslim by Omar Saif Ghobash.” The New York Journal of Books. February 15, 2017.
“Agnes by Peter Stamm.” The New York Journal of Books. October 24, 2016.
“The Story in the Shadows: an Interview with Sjón.” The Paris Review. September 26, 2016.
“Loner: A Novel by Teddy Wayne.” The New York Journal of Books. September 12, 2016.
“Daniel Stein, Interpreter by Ludmila Ulitskaya.” The Daily Beast. April 23, 2011.
“The Free World by David Bezmozgis.” Bookslut. July, 2011.
“When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg.” The Brooklyn Rail. June 3, 2011.
“The Heaven of Others by Joshua Cohen.” Bookslut. March, 2011.
“Panorama by H.G. Adler.” Bookslut. March, 2011.
“The Insufferable Gaucho by Roberto Bolaño.” KGB Bar Literary Magazine. October, 2010.
“Pulled Punch” On The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer. The Brooklyn Rail. May 6, 2010.