About Dan Friedman
One of Zeek's founding editors, Dan is a writer and educator. His first book -- Forbears -- is due in 2009.Â
With a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale and an MA in English Literature from Cambridge he has taught poetry, literature, and film at Cambridge and Yale. More recently he has headed the English Departments at Schechter Regional and Yeshiva University High Schools. As well as publishing various scholarly articles on film, poetry, and photography he is a qualified soccer coach and certified life guard. Dan writes very serious fiction but is better known for his radio and television comedy writing – most notably for the award-winning British television comedy, da Ali G Show.
Fiction and Non-Fiction: Different Forms of Lying
The Sami Rohr Prize For Jewish Literature “There is no such thing as non-fiction,” said novelist David Peace in a recent television interview and I’m inclined to agree. So when the Jewish Book Council’s annual Sami Rohr Prize – a … Read More
Scalin’s Skulls
Every day when we clean our teeth we see in the mirror a glimpse of the polished skull to which worms will eventually reduce us. For most of us, though, this memento mori remains unnoticed, and any fears of mortality … Read More
Hip-Hop Heeb Jumps the Shark
Never has so much been invested in being a hip Heeb, both financially and culturally. For those outside the New York metropolitan area, though, the specific patterns and emphases of that hipness may not have been made clear over the … Read More
Last Summer War, Next Summer Laughter
It's the year of Arab-Israeli comedy. Comics are the new rock stars and, in lieu of major stadium concerts for peace, we have stand-up, sitcom, and movie hilarity taking on the bitterest simmering geopolitical conflict of the past century (with … Read More
Review: Live and Become
The State of Israel has to balance on many knife edges, one being the edge between being a "light unto the nations" and being a nation like any other. Israel's film industry is similarly precariously balanced between being particularist and … Read More