Today’s One-Liner (#69)
“People ignore reality in favor of their bright ideas.” –Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, 1965, quoted in Susie Linfield, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky
Category: Israel
Today’s One-Liner (#66)
When I know I can change things, I become as active as a cyclone. –Golda Meir, in Oriana Fallaci, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power
Recent Reading
The job of an intellectual is to listen to the history that is being made all around you and to respond in new ways by re-assessing your previous beliefs. This is what the founding generation…
Dear Ziva
Dear Ziva, I’ve read two of Hillel Halkin’s books: Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist’s Polemic and A Complicated Jew: Selected Essays. (I loved his translation of Sholem Aleichem [Tevye the Dairyman and…
Choosing Guiding Means
A few years ago I read Amos Oz’s trenchant book, How to Cure a Fanatic. His context was the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Therein, Oz noted that “the essence of fanaticism lies in…
From Lea Goldberg’s Diary
The greatest and only crime: spiritual laziness. And within that spiritual laziness, one doesn’t even acknowledge it, making it seven times worse. –Peter Cole, Hebrew Writers on Writing
Problematizing My Faves: Susie Linfield on Noam Chomsky
Dear Max, The following passages are from Susie Linfield’s book, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky. While the focus is on Middle East matters, you may see some…
Joanie’s Teacher
“Make the impossible possible, the possible easy, the easy elegant.” –Moshe Feldenkrais
I’m Assuming That Elie Wiesel and Noam Chomsky Met at Least Once
Recently, the Persian scholar and poetry translator Matt Miller sent me condolences upon the death of one of my teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh. I mentioned to him that the several of the teachers I first…