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…

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…

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…

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,…