Today’s One-Liner (#69)

“People ignore reality in favor of their bright ideas.” –Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, 1965, quoted in Susie Linfield, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky

Biographilia

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…

Jew-in-the-Library, Jew-in-the-Streets

Jill Krementz, The Jewish Writer, Henry Holt and Company, 1998 Portraits, bios, occasionally quotations form this coffee table book collection of Jewish writers, poets, novelists, scholars. Wiesel is here, as is his nemesis Hannah Arendt,…

Ventures

Friends, I wanted to pass this brief passage on to you from Hannah Arendt, German philosopher, Jewish immigrant to the USA, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem, from an interview in 1964… The venture into the…

Your Multitudes Don’t Freak Me Out

You told me everything Bella Levenshteyn So I’ll tell you: I am full of wonder Love and gratitude For your multitudinous yous Your charming you Your depraved you You back against the wall you Your…

Bella Levenshteyn’s Jewish Litany

Dear Shimmelstoy I’ve been thinking about our last conversation And while I have some sympathy For those who agonize about Jewish identity For me anyway it’s gotten clearer In these past few years Thank you…

Deploying the Holocaust

Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, by Idith Zertal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.  Cambridge Middle East Studies 21. 208 pages. Biographies to p. 216. Glossary to p. 222.  Bibliography to p. 230. Index…

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…