Poetry Lover

I’ve read it every day of my life since I was thirteen. It is, among the man-made artifacts, my primary source of knowledge of the stuff of this world and the next. Its limitless archive…

The Ultimate in Jewish Nightmares

I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure…

Bless Your Heart

One of the most powerful responses To my novel Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine Was yours I sent you a draft You stopped reading After fifty pages It was the chapter in which the Israeli…

It’s Michelle Yeoh’s Face

A skeptical friend asked why I like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon so much… so the following, off the top of my head, even though I recognize de gustibus non est disputandum… Why is it the best (for…

The Last Sentence of Middlemarch

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number…

Be Here Now

In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….