Mechaiehs
Mechaiaeh… Pronounced m’KHY-eh, to rhyme with “messiah.” The kh sound is, of course, the way a MacTavish would roll it out. From Hebrew. Pleasure, great enjoyment, a real joy. … Mechaieh comes from the Hebrew…
Category: Jewish Tradition
Hedy & Heine
The year after Mev died I read a lot of literature– Poetry, novels, plays One volume I took refuge in Was a bi-lingual edition of Heine’s Songs of Love & Grief I have a favorite…
Taking a Stand: A Reflection on Elie Wiesel and Hedy Epstein
These days I am thinking of two Holocaust survivors. I met with one today: 86 year-old Hedy Epstein and I had lunch at Blackberry Cafe in Clayton. The other is receiving an honorary doctorate tomorrow…
Higher Law
Review of Steven V. Mazie, Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State. Published first in Journal of Church and State, 2006. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This…
An Israeli Poet
The following poem by Israeli Aharon Shabtai is translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. It appears in his aptly entitled collection from New Directions, J’Accuse. “War” I, too, have declared war: You’ll need to…
Good Human Material
Review of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II by Yosef Grodzinsky. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004. First published in the Journal…
Allen Ginsberg: What’s More Important than Hope
Via email I received an essay by Bay Area activist and founder of Middle East Children’s Alliance, Barbara Lubin. In her conclusion on her 20+years of activism on Israel/Palestine, she writes the following… And what…
Fear and Hatred in Postwar Poland
Review of Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. New York: Random House, 2006. 303 p. $25.95. Forthcoming in Shofar. In Fear, historian Jan Gross explores a seemingly baffling phenomenon. How is it that there was…
A Jewish Theology of Liberation
A review of Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, 3rd expanded edition, by Marc H. Ellis. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004. First Published in the Journal of Palestine Studies (2005). At the 60th anniversary…
Long Live Hybridity
On Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European Introduction b Christopher Bollas Response by Jacqueline Rose Verso, 2003 In Jacqueline Rose’s eyes, Edward Said’s reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism is “[a] political parable, then,…