Envisioning Eutopia
I understand why Yiddish writers still draw on the theme of the old homeland, of the shtetl, where the people forged the treasure of their language and their lifestyle. But I believe that, no matter…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
“If Not You, Who?”
Having recently read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, I thought of Marcel Proust’s Time Regained, volume 7 in his In Search of Lost Time. 1. As for the inner book of unknown symbols……
A Monument Made of Words
Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father’s Court June 1998 After we had left Warsaw (during the First World War), we continued to hear news of him from time to time. One son died, a daughter…
The Real United States by Hedy Epstein
Not long after I came to the United States [later 1948], I began to work for the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA) near New York’s City Hall and later in the agency’s shelter…
Hasidism
You can take everything from me—the pillow from under my head, my house—but you cannot take God away from my heart. — Nahman of Bratslav Everything the true Hasid does or does not do mirrors…
Internationalista (Daydream/2)
It’s Nablus spring 1989 The intifada is in full bloom And there’s always something happening in and with and from the resistance International delegations come and go 10,000 photos are taken of David (A Palestinian…
Surplus You Can Count on in the Soviet Union
“We’ll run out of potatoes before spring. Same with bread. Same with firewood. The only thing we won’t be short of is grief.” — Marya, in Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad
Doctor Shmoctor
This afternoon I was perusing Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made, and came across the following skit of Lenny…
Glatshteyn
Janet R. Hadda, Yankev Glatshteyn Twayne Publishers, 1980 Having read translations of Yankev Glatshteyn from Howe and company’s Modern Yiddish Poetry, Whitman’s Selected Poems, Zumoff’s I Keep Recalling, and also Fein’s Selected Poems, I treated…
In Today’s News…
Come you masters of war $8.7 Trillion