The Ultimate in Jewish Nightmares
I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure…
Bless Your Heart
One of the most powerful responses To my novel Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine Was yours I sent you a draft You stopped reading After fifty pages It was the chapter in which the Israeli…
A Nobody with Whom You Should Get Acquainted
Dear Shimmelstoy After our conversation yesterday afternoon I wrote the following lines Thanks for your encouragement If you want to pass it on To some of your students Go right ahead Bella Levenshteyn He…
It’s Michelle Yeoh’s Face
A skeptical friend asked why I like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon so much… so the following, off the top of my head, even though I recognize de gustibus non est disputandum… Why is it the best (for…
The Last Sentence of Middlemarch
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number…
Be Here Now
In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….
Share the Wealth with Melissa Chapnick: Sunday 2 August 2015
What Does Our Food Eat? – Eggs, Chickens, and Food Systems in Pastocalle, Ecuador This summer Melissa Chapnick spent six weeks living and working in Pastocalle, Ecuador. Working in conjunction with Dr. Lora Iannotti of…
Two Views on Civilization
1. The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and…
Finkelstein’s Pessimism and Optimism
Philosopher Paul Ricoeur identified Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche as three masters of suspicion in the modern West. Over the last three decades, Norman Finkelstein has shown himself to be a contemporary maven of suspicion when…