An Anti-Defamation League unto Himself
I’ve read half of Philip Roth’s books, a few more than once. Recently I returned to the novel Operation Shylock and was struck by this testimonial outburst of one of the characters— “‘Grant me that…
Category: Jewish Tradition
Undeclinable
Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations With Phillippe Nemo Emmanuel Levinas and Jill Robbins, Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas A person dear to me is finishing her…
The Good News of Translation
1. Thanks to __________, I Was Able to Read_______’s _________ [Language] Richard Fein, Yankev Glatshteyn, Selected Poems [Yiddish] Hillel Halkin, Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman [Yiddish] Nili Wachtel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Meshugah [Yiddish] Martha…
Yiddish Writers
H. Leivick I have often felt that instead of writing my autobiography I would like to write the biography of my poems. I mean, tell the life story of some of my poems… Sholem Aleichem…
Poets/2
I Am by Laura Aranda I am on my way I am haven’t yet arrived and the in the in-between I am that bliss you find in a mountain rainstorm in a solitary blade of…
Remembering Shammai
Shabes morning I fix a period for reading My three “rabbis” recently deceased— Harold Bloom, whose extended family on both sides perished in Europe Every boy but one in George Steiner’s lycée lived after the…
An Alphabetical List
The following is an alphabetical list of topics and/or possible chapter titles for a book I was working on in 2011. At this stage, it was autobiographical. It eventually morphed and became the novel, Dear…
The Reading Life/1
The Chasm between Them and Us Kadya Molodovsky, A Jewish Refugee in New York: Rivke Zilberg’s JournalTranslated by Anita Norich The accomplished Yiddish writer Molodovsky wrote this novel in serialized form in 1940-41, knowing obviously…
A Youth
The Daily Mailby Hedy Epstein In those first years of the Nazi regime, it was hard for me to grasp the import of politics writ large. However, I would soon come face to face…
“Our Exposed Nerve”
October 12, 2002 This book is crucial to my work. Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist and child of Holocaust survivors trying to report accurately what has been transpiring in Gaza since the famous handshake….