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…
[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…
#1Last Night’s Email from Jessica Flier I write, becauseFirst and foremost, I must!But also – because,Of you.To take the broken heart and expose itbring the carefully concealed underbelly to the surfaceresisting the urge to hide…
1.“There is a story in the Jewish tradition about a student going to see a great rabbi, not principally to study Torah or Talmud, but to watch how the rabbi ties his shoes.”–Eboo Patel 2. “I…
I have no idea that at the same time in the United States of America, Theodore Adorno has come out with the sweeping statement that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. A meaningful, powerful…
He used to say,“It is not your dutyTo complete the work, But neither are you freeTo desist from it…” –Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot, 2.21
“Make the impossible possible, the possible easy, the easy elegant.” –Moshe Feldenkrais
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and ReflectionsEdited by Hannah ArendtSchocken Books, 1988 The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that “the state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We…