Book Recommendation: Gideon Levy

I highly recommend Gideon Levy’s new book, The Punishment of Gaza. Reading it reminded me of something Noam Chomsky wrote in 1996: “Those who came to be honored much later as the Prophets received rather different…

Iraq: Remembrance & Responsibility

My friend Laura Weis shared this  quotation with me, and I want to share it with you. We all need to reflect on one fact that has been almost completely expunged from the U.S. consciousness:…

Dostoevsky Wrote, “Beauty…

..will save the world” I don’t know about “save” But, yes, beauty & friendship & community & solidarity & loveshine may get us through the next week Hedy Epstein and Sandra Tamari, on the occasion…

The Way It Is

There are hundred thousands of stems linking us to everything in the cosmos, Supporting us and making it possible for us to be. Do you see the link between you and me? If you are…

Easy To Forget

As long as we are motivated by the desire to punish each other, there will be no end to the hostilities and there will be no happiness in me, in you, or between us. –Thich…

Bearing Witness

for Sandra Tamari Yet it was plain to us that by reckoning with Taha’s exceptional personality and poems, many of these American audiences were also reckoning for the first time with a Palestinian—not as a…

“There’s Just a Meanness in This World”

On Charles Reznikoff, Testimony, v.2 The United States (1885-1915):  Recitative I can’t say I was tremendously impressed with this “broken-up prose” (wife Marie Syrkin’s label). Maybe it’s the dating—it’s way back in US history, and it’s hard…