Ari R. Hoffman

Law, Literature, and Jewish ideas

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Mar 6, 2019, 10:57 PM

Israel’s Double Moonshot

Israel’s Double Moonshot These last couple of weeks a very small country made two very big bets. Both captured headlines and prompted complex calculations and hopeful odds making. In their own way, the project to land a spacecraft on the...

Oct 30, 2018, 6:46 PM

Jewish History Comes to America

We thought it was different, here. The broken windows and burnt synagogues of Europe, the hate without end and the lives lived in between the pulled trigger and the impact of the bullet. All of that, we thought, belonged...

May 15, 2018, 12:08 PM

Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Split Screen of Jewish History

Monday, May 14 will go down as a watershed day in the history of Israel, and of the Jewish people. For the former, it represents a triumph on two distinct fronts. First, for a country that is subject to...

Apr 18, 2018, 12:50 AM

Babylon and Jerusalem: Between Strangelands and Homeland

Over a millennium ago, the Talmud records a miracle of reverse aging. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariyah, ticketed for the top spot atop the Sanhedrin, looked too young for the job. Only eighteen, his cheeks were too smooth and is...

Mar 19, 2018, 8:17 AM

Bibi’s Trials and the Triumph of Zionism

For this, we waited 2,000 years? A prime minister mired in cascading scandals. The barter of cigars for legislation, and champagne for tax breaks. A political system paralyzed by fractional coalitions and factional politics, seemingly unable to move from...

Jan 27, 2018, 1:15 AM

Jawbones and the Presence of the Past

The extent of our old age, an ongoing scandal to some and the most established of facts to others, has become breaking news. When, we would like to know, did we take the form we recognize as our own...

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About Me

Ari holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Harvard University, and is a J.D. candidate at Stanford Law School. His first book, This Year in Jerusalem: The Israel Novel and Why it Matters, is forthcoming from S.U.N.Y. Press.

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