Writing about A.B. Yehoshua’s 1990 experimental, historical novel “Mr. Mani,” Jeffrey Saks considers how the Hebrew author raised questions about how the Jewish past reverberates throughout the generations. Saks also discusses his unlikely friendship with Yehoshua, and what the author, who passed away last week at age 85, taught him about Jewish life and Zionism. 

Rachel Sharansky Danziger writes on the value of appreciating common literary forms: By treating all myths and religious stories as variations on the same deeper psychological drama, Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” discards the question of their veracity, rendering them all equally true – or untrue. To accept this position is to reject the first commandment, Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith, and so much else besides. That said, Campbell’s methodology can still enrich our study of Tanakh.