The good writers are the guys who write articles that don’t even seem to have a lead. When you start you already feel you’re in the middle of a story you can’t stop reading. Then when I really am in the middle I sometimes shake myself awake and go back to the first sentence to [...]
continue reading >>What will you have today, schmaltz or horseradish?
I’ve been trained to choke-up when the hero/heroine from a traditional culture, tempted by the superficial (or evil, tawdry, contemptible) values of contemporary society, is forgiven (or blessed, understood, cured) by the old-world father (or chief, grandmother, shaman, guru).
That’s when I feel (and oh boy do I feel) that that I am so shallow and [...]
Hi Touré, it’s me, with the usual suspects (Krim, Bellow, etc)
Skilled hosts steer the conversation toward topics that will draw out their guests. So when I read Touré’s Do Not Pass essay in yesterday’s NY Times Book Review I knew he was only nominally addressing a general audience.
Really, he was talking to me.
Okay, Touré, okay. I got the hint. I’ve got the Jewish angle on the topic [...]
New article in the Forward contains aphorism
According to a friend, I’ve coined an aphorism in an article I wrote for the Forward about a new exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. The exhibit is an artistic response to Hitler’s Mein Kampf . The aphorism is,
“Being Jewish means looking both ways for oncoming history.”
I confess I had to look up [...]
A Princess Project for Intellectuals: Who Will Take Our Surplus Education?
I was listening to NPR just now, and before David Edelstein delivered his review of two new movies by Scorcese and Polanski there was a public service message about the Princess Project, which donates surplus prom dresses to high school girls who cannot afford to buy their own.
Then Edelstein’s voice arrived, transfixing NPR audiences the [...]
Salinger’s Jewish dream (and identity)
The Gothamist reports that New York’s Morgan Library will soon exhibit eleven J.D. Salinger letters, including one in which he fantasized about visiting Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in “the faint hope that some kindly old Hasid from the eighteenth century would invite him home for matzoh ball soup or a cup of tea.”
This should put an end [...]
Allan Sherman’s Hello Muddah lyrics
The lyrics to Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah”
Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh,
Here I am at Camp Granada.
Camp is very entertaining,
And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining.
I went hiking with Joe Spivey.
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Leonard Skinner.
He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner.
All the counselors hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators.
And [...]
New Madoff book looks to Jewish history, gets lost
It’s only been available in the U.S. for a few days, but Hebrew University professor Bernard Avishai got a UK copy of the new Bernard Madoff book, The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Investment Scam, and reported in his (terrific) blog that author Adam LeBor dips into Jewish history to explain [...]
continue reading >>Salinger the Recluse cool in Real World world
The PBS Newshour had some professors on to talk about J.D. Salinger, and Salinger the Recluse emerged as something just as interesting — maybe more — than Salinger the writer. Robert Thompson of Syracuse nailed it (6:18 to 6:52):
“He didn’t like the idea of notoriety and fame and this makes him an unbelievably interesting character, [...]
Jewish Studies held in Seymour Krim disappearance
It seems that when Jewish Studies pulled up its truck at the American culture counter and started packing everything for a Jewish audit Seymour Krim got left on the sidewalk. And he was yelling.
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