Category: Jewish Tradition

What To Do/14

There was nothing to do but wait it out. My mind has to become accustomed to loneliness. And when one is alone there is nothing to do but study. — I.B. Singer, In My Father’s…

Remembrance as Resistance

“Jews felt that to forget constituted a crime against memory as well as against justice:  whoever forgets becomes the executioner’s accomplice.  The executioner kills twice, the second time when he tries to erase the traces…

Responsibility

“But we all learn from the Midrash the essential lesson of human and social responsibility.  True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. …

A Jewish Vocation

This week I finished Marcel Reich-Ranicki‘s autobiography,  The Author of Himself.  He was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the foremost literary critic in post-war Germany.  As I read him, I thought of my…

List/27

I recently read David Roskies’ book, The Search for a Usable Jewish Past, and from its pages I noted the following books or authors to read: Ahad Ha’am S. Y. Agnon, The Bridal Canopy, A Simple Story,…

A Reader to an Author

“A whole world collapsed before my very eyes, but you, my favorite author, are bringing it to life again.” –Miriam, in I.B. Singer’s Meshugah

Face to Face with Elie Wiesel

This short review was originally published in the bulletin of the Center for Ethics and Social Policy in Berkeley, April 1993.  My book, Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership, was published in spring 2001….

A Nation of Words

Miriam Weinstein’s Yiddish: A Nation of Words is a compelling book. Go to Amazon.com and type in “Yiddish” and many books will come up whose titles are cheap, sentimental, ridiculous, goofy.  Weinstein has a sense…

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…