Twenty-two Years Ago
The following is from Israeli novelist David Grossman’s Seven Days: A Diary, October 2001, in Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years after Oslo MONDAYI keep reading hostile remarks about Israel in the…
Category: Jewish Tradition
Sooner or Later, We All Know Somebody Like This
“… and you know I’m not a father who goes around bragging about his kids–but on the subject of Beilke …” Tevye, in Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman, translated by Hillel Halkin
Oy Vey Iz Mir
“If it didn’t work out God mustn’t have wanted it to. You, Tsaytl, just weren’t meant to be a fine lady with a house full of grand things and two parents who could finally enjoy…
Pessimism of the Intelligence, Optimism of the Will
Actually, even if it were possible, Rachel Ertel would not have tried to revive Eastern European culture. She wants only to preserve its memory and apply some of the political insights associated with the tradition…
Commonplace Book: Rokhl, 2019
Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist, playwright, attorney, and Jewish world gadfly in New York City.
Responding to a Pogrom
Violence was much on Tolstoy’s mind. Some eight months before Bryan’s visit a terrible pogrom against the Jews had occurred in Kishinyov. Horrified by this event, Tolstoy readily lent his name to a protest signed…
The Golden Rule
Tzu-Kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, Perhaps the saying about consideration: ‘Never do to others what you would not like…
He Must Go on, He Can’t Go on, He’ll Go on
Everything was doomed [in 1943]: [Yankev Glatshteyn’s] people, his tradition, its language, his artistic freedom, his chances of contributing to a continuing literature. Even his awesome responsibility as the chronicler of the last days of…
To Cancel or Not to Cancel?
[A TV reporter] wanted to know how I came to terms with a Jew-hater like Richard Wagner. I replied spontaneously: ‘There were, and there are, many fine people on earth, but none of them has…