Most Recent Zeek Articles

Talking Torah with Rabbi Rebecca Alpert

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:48:57 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: July 21, 2008 8:48 am
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Zeek's Editor-in-chief, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, talks with Rabbi Rebecca Alpert about social justice, feminism and her book, Whose Torah? Zeek: When people hear your name, Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, they tend to think, "Jewish feminist lesbian." Has that label been useful or helpful for you? Rabbi Rebecca Alpert: All labels are problematic, but I don't mind taking on this label, and people do think of me that way - though they are often shocked that my current work is on Jews and baseball, or that my earlier work was on Reform rabbis developing an understanding of healing in the early part of the twentieth century. The label, though, was helpful back in the 1970s and 1980s when the idea of a lesbian rabbi was shocking. I was perfectly happy to stand up and confuse people. Zeek: I was impressed to learn in your new book,Whose Torah, that you have deep experience in peace and poverty work. RA: I do see feminism and gay rights work as part of a larger progressive agenda, both within the Jewish community and in the world at large. I have always understood feminism as being about more than just equal rights for women. Feminism opened my eyes so I realized that if you make life better for women, you make life better for everybody. Social justice is the grounding for the movement. Coming out of Reform Judaism, I believed social justice was the main way we Jews could make a contribution. Zeek: How do you see social justice and spirituality connected within Judaism? RA: I am very moved by Arthur Waskow's vision linking social justice to spirituality. That connection has not been the...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/talking_torah_rabbi_rebecca_alpert

A World Without Ashkenazim

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:56:35 -0500

Author: Ezra Sarajinsky
Posted to Jewcy: July 15, 2008 9:56 pm
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Since its release in 1982, Jacob Goldwasser's first feature, Under The Nose (Mitahat La'af) has acquired cult status in Israel, setting the cinematic standard for portraying domestic social problems for many years to come. To mark its 25th anniversary in 2007, Under The Nose was released on DVD. A script book was also recently published which included an interview with the director and the scriptwriter, three essays, and a short story inspired by the film — a rare event for a cultural scene in which the study of film is sparse. Under The Nose is based on an incident that made headlines in Israel in 1976. In what was initially reported as a daring and sophisticated crime, burglars penetrated Jaffa’s police headquarters and removed a safe containing 3 million Lira (the name of Israel’s currency until 1977). The capture of the burglars revealed them to be small time criminals, who clumsily carried out the burglary, and whose success was traced to their luck, and, mainly, to the ineptitude of Jaffa’s police to prevent such an event from taking place in their very own HQ. Goldwasser and his scriptwriter, Haim Merin, turn the story into a parable about the margins of Israeli society. Sammy and Herzl, the two main characters, who are played by Uri Gavriel and Moshe Ivgy respectively are small time criminals, who in the Israel of the late 1970s and early 1980s (as well as today), would be triply marginalized: Mizrachi in a world where Ashkenazi Jews rule; poor in a society that is taking quick strides to dismantle its public sector and adopt American-style capitalism; and obscure players in a milieu where prestige—built on competence and dare—counts for everything. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/world_without_ashkenazis_0

These Hollows, and Suchlike

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:55:30 -0500

Author: ZeekFiction
Posted to Jewcy: July 14, 2008 1:55 pm
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Donari Braxton has written brave quantities of fiction, poetry, theater, and "cross-genre work," and has also translated. His writing has been widely anthologized in the UK and the United States, and his first collection of stories, I, will be succeeded in 2008 by a second. Presently he lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is at work on a novel. Here are my favorite lines of this story - "These Hollows, and Suchlike" - which is funning on both us and itself, anything but "hollow" and yet, full of holes: "Jewish humor, I supposed. Choggys liked Jewish humor. And so I asked him flat-out: ‘Jewish humor, my nigga?'" Dr. Choggys West has appeared in Braxton's fiction before. One hopes he will have the occasion to consult with us again. - Joshua Cohen, Fiction Editor "I want you to tell me your favorite word in 1994." "My favorite word." "In 1994, yes." "No." "Be a sport," said Choggys real rationally-like. But I was being a sport, I insisted to Choggys, who scowled and added: "Be an art then," he added, so to that I quickly stammered off: "Ask me again?" "1994 please, your favorite word." "Hiccups." Choggys hesitated before asking, "And presently?" "Yes." † Dr. Choggys West had one rule. Don't be a push-over, and the vowel, always, is the tonic syllable. I didn't see how the second rule related to helping me grow as an individual, so I said that to Choggys, and asked him what kind of therapy he practiced. "Hula-hoop." "The fuck outta here," I told him. So vaguely twinkling like a loose basement tug-incandescent he added, "And if I keep it up, I may even get my degree." Jewish...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/these_hollows_and_suchlike

The Origins of Israeli Post-Rock

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:14:38 -0500

Author: Joel Schalit
Posted to Jewcy: July 11, 2008 6:14 pm
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During the late 1970s, I can't remember how many times my siblings and I would hear a song on the radio--most often English-language pop and disco--and try to sing along. We'd mimic the lyrics, switching back and forth between English and Hebrew as we unsuccessfully attempted to master particularly difficult American-sounding turns of phrase. Boney M's 1978 mega-hit "Rasputin," and Earth, Wind and Fire's 1979 smash "Boogie Wonderland" were particular sources of amusement, as friends and family would struggle to properly enunciate "R" and "W," sounding, in the case of "Vonderland," like Israeli caricatures of Bela Lugosi. We tried to be forgiving of each other, but sometimes it just wasn't so easy. As a family composed of multilingual Israeli parents and British-educated adolescents, we were no strangers to the embarrassment of lacking fluency in such a resolutely complex linguistic context. However, it made appearing cool and hip that much harder, especially when it came to showing off our knowledge of popular music. "Stairvey to Cheaven," I can recall an older relative singing in our car once, as the Led Zeppelin song came on the Voice of Peace station. That time, I had to work a little harder than usual to stifle a laugh. I was ten years old, and at that age, anyone's shame was my own personal gain--especially when I could congratulate myself for knowing better than a longhaired twenty-something. Listening to the new Numero Group compilation Soul...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/desert_disco

TWO POEMS by RONNY SOMECK

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:42:46 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: July 02, 2008 4:42 pm
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Biting into Her Beauty In memory of Noah Orbach And then came this tall guy and said he had been Ordering large meals at Burger King where she was working Just to bite into her beauty. Her death milkeed his teeth. He no longer rips Little packets in order to squirt Ketchup on meat, now orphaned In the belly of a bun. Outside, a dry June wind heated the pot of the street, A spoon of sun was stirring in his head as in a bowl of soup, And memory of her was like oil boiling and turning A cocoon potato into butterfly-fries To be salted by a tear. Guillotine (Or: In regards to a Young Poet) If one of these days you meet the Frenchman, Englishman, and German, All brought to the guillotine, remember! The Frenchman asked they put him facing Upward to look death in the eye; The Englishman wanted to bury his gaze into the ground. With both the blade got stuck An inch before their head sang A farewell song to their body. When they asked the German in what direction to put him, He answered: "First of all, fix the guillotine." And you, Don't forget to stare straight into his eyes And tell him, it's not worth fixing her who wanted To behead your thoughts, But you should let her dream about The fireworks of the word blood, Even if she decides to stop an inch before This "impolite encounter" with The nape or Throat. Remember! The guillotine can be as small as clippers...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/two_poems_ronny_someck

The Four Horsemen of the New Atheism

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:50:00 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: July 02, 2008 10:50 am
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I'm tired. Most of my reading time in the last few weeks has been devoted to the "Four Horseman of Atheism"-Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. And now that I've emerged from my self-imposed sequestration-blinking in the sunlight and desperate for a beer-I deeply regret ever suggesting this article to Zeek. My problem is not with atheism per se. If someone does not believe in God, that's no concern of mine. Just as it's no concern if, say, another Jew practices a more stringent level of observance than I do. (Or a lesser one, but he'd tough to find.) My problem, rather, is with these authors, for their smugness and dogmatism. I felt alternatively harangued or patronized or downright bored. Reading their books, one after the other, was an enervating experience. Champion of Godlessness: Christopher Hitchens The exercise did begin well, with Hitchens' god [sic] is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens is a gifted writer, so his book is actually entertaining. He explores many of the same themes as his colleagues in godlessness-how religion leads to ignorance, oppression, and ethical confusion-but in a more diverting way, despite, or maybe due to, his rhetorical excesses. Those who read this kind of book looking to be offended will come away satisfied: Hitchens calls the God of the Hebrews "ill-tempered and implacable and bloody and provincial"; he refers to Jesus...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/four_horsemen_new_atheism

Israeli Fiction: "Laundry"

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:59:11 -0500

Author: Adam L. Rovner
Posted to Jewcy: July 02, 2008 9:59 am
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Suzane Adam’s acclaimed novel, Laundry, reminds readers that childhood is all too often pervaded by fears, both real and imagined, both spoken and unspoken. In this lyric excerpt, a grown woman recalls the distant torments of her childhood in the 1950s ‘beyond the forests’—in Transylvania. Sickness, slaughter, and long suppressed secrets form the backdrop for the narrator’s dark fairy tale of her youth. What begins as a closely-observed domestic scene from a lost world soon burns with feverish menace. But only by understanding her painful past can the narrator make sense of the mystery of her Israeli present.---Adam Rovner, translations editor We sat on the carpet in the large room that we used for both family and guests. One large rug covered most of the parquet floor. My sister was watching me. For some reason the rug caught my eye; with concentration I methodically traced the patterns. A wine-colored border two fingers wide, a thin black stripe, a thin white stripe crossed by black lines like the teeth of people in the pictures I drew. Flowers and stems twisted in a wonderful pattern in the middle of the rug, leaves streamed from the flowers in stripes and circles, each shape changing and turning into a new shape, burgundy, black, brown, white, gold, green—an expensive Persian rug, they’d explained to me. I wasn’t allowed to walk on it in my dirty shoes. Only in the summertime did they take up the heavy rug—my mother, my father, and Anna, too, who only came to clean and iron—hanging it on the wooden fence outside, and all the neighbors passing by would stop and marvel at its beauty. My mother would put a kerchief on so she wouldn’t get dust in her braid, then she’d beat both sides of the rug with a carpet-beater made from a bundle of reeds. When she was finished,...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/israeli_fiction_laundry_excerpt

Monogamy and Monotheism

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:23:27 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: June 30, 2008 5:23 pm
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I so want to be in love To believe monotheistically in you, that you are my tender, most tender love and give to you my sense of wonder -- worlds captured in words - Abraham Joshua Heschel, "Youngest Desire" Falling out of love is never easy, especially after a three-year relationship with someone you hoped to marry, raise children with, and be parted from only by death. For me, the last several months have been like a period of grief; some days are fine, some are filled with shadow, and most are a little hollow. But as the winter has given way to spring, and spring begun to hint of summer, the silver linings of the clouds have begun to reflect more light. In that light I've seen how the way I am in relationship often undermines the best parts of me. I tend to fall in love, as Heschel wrote, monotheistically. While my recently ended relationship was not physically monogamous (few lasting gay male partnerships are), it was, for me at least, emotionally monogamous. I wanted my partner to be my primary source of love, affection, companionship, and support. I wanted to turn to him whenever I needed help, and hold him when he did. Although I maintained many friendships, some of them quite dear, I loved that my partner was my best friend, my secret-keeper, the one who was dear to my heart. I know I am not alone in regarding my beloved in this way, and I am sure that for many people, it poses no problems at all. But in the months since our separation, it's become clear to me that all this monogamy of affection came at the price of my love for other people. For all my deep friendships and erotic connections, I was cut off. People would come up to me after...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/monogamy_and_monotheism

Beta Israel: Orphans of Circumstance

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:38:32 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: June 30, 2008 11:38 am
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Under the provisions of Israel's Law of Return, more than 120,000 Ethiopian Jews have settled in the country over the last three decades. Many of these Jews arrived during the 1980s and 1990s, when, in response to civil war and famine in Ethiopia, the Israeli government mounted massive rescue operations. Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991 airlifted over 85 percent of Ethiopia's entire Jewish population to Israel. All of the immigrant groups who have settled in Israel have encountered problems integrating into Israeli society, but minority ethnic groups have often had a particularly hard time. Unlike many of their central and eastern European brethren, the new Ethiopian olim arrived without educational qualifications or job skills. Coming from a subsistence economy, they often found themselves ill-equipped to work in an industrialized, first-world environment like Israel. Besides having to start virtually from scratch economically, Ethiopian Jews (like the Mizrachi immigrants two decades before them) have found themselves consistently confronted with prejudice, discrimination, and racism from both Israeli society and the country's political establishment. While vast amounts of government money have been poured into absorbing these immigrants, progress has been slow. Figures released in 2007 show how serious the socio-economic disparities still remain between Israel's Ethiopian population and the rest of Israeli society: Ethiopians live in impoverished neighborhoods, face sky-rocketing unemployment, and have the highest high-school dropout rate of any Jewish group in Israel. With average per capita income among Ethiopian Jews standing at NIS 2,000 a month, Ethiopians' salaries are around half those of all other Israeli Jews, and considerably...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/beta_israel_orphans_circumstance

Poem: "Miriam and Her Brothers"

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:43:00 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: June 26, 2008 10:43 am
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MIRIAM AND HER BROTHERS And the Lord said unto Moses: ‘If her father had but spit in her face, should she not hide in shame seven days? Let her be shut up without the camp seven days, and after that she shall be brought in again.’ And Miriam was shut up without the camp seven days; and the people journeyed not until Miriam was brought in again. (Numbers 12:14-15) Beyond the camp in her tent, she lies, A leper, whiter than the moonlight Slanting in. She cannot catch The bleating of babies, of sheep, The blast of trumpets. Too far to hear Goldsmiths hammering Flowers and vines on the seven-branched lamp, She is spared the seventy Old men babbling prophecies, The chorus weeping for Egyptian Fish, cucumbers, melons, Garlic, whining for meat. Their retching from the rotten quail Does not reach her. She hears no men Grunting, no women snoring She itches, aches, burns, Yet the desert wind, hoarse and relentless, Sings to her. With sand, it cools Her wounds. She will heal, Away from Aaron, who also Whispered against the dark wife Of meek Moses, perfect Moses, Favored by the Pillar of Cloud. Face-to-face, God singled her out From her brothers— “If her father had But spit in her face!” Let Aaron Beseech Moses, and Moses beg God for her sake! Oh, family! Shamed? Unruly daughter, She finds her voice. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/richard_chess

Welcome to My Neighborhood

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:26:21 -0500

Leading From The Center: Bernard Avishai's The Hebrew Republic

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:00:22 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: June 24, 2008 7:00 am
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Bernard Avishai is a thinker and writer I've admired for some time, ever since I read his rather unfortunately titled 1985 work, The Tragedy of Zionism. That book was not, as one might think, an anti-Zionist exercise. Quite the opposite. In The Tragedy of Zionism, Avishai called for the re-establishment of the ideological roots of Zionism. Avishai defines Zionism in the same way a great many Israelis do: as a Jewish national liberation movement. The basic impetus of Zionism, in this understanding, was the establishment of a strong and stable state. Viewed in those terms, by 1948 Zionism had largely served its purpose. Avishai's complaint is that outmoded Zionist institutions, mixed with the ongoing conflict with the Arabs, have impeded the full establishment of Israeli democracy. In his view, such institutions should have been gradually replaced by state institutions based on legal principles rather than ideology. He calls, chiefly, for a constitution, contending that Israel's Basic Laws are a poor substitute. Indeed, Avishai argues that David Ben-Gurion "made perhaps his most short-sighted decision" when he "let the moment" for adopting an Israeli Constitution pass in 1949. In his new book, The Hebrew Republic, Avishai takes this argument one step further, suggesting that Israel's best hope for peace-and for a bright future--is to embrace European-style secular democracy, integrating its Arab citizens into a business-driven...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/leading_center_bernard_avishais_hebrew_republic

POEM: Isaiah Interviewed: An Excerpt

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:37:55 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: June 19, 2008 6:37 am
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Isaiah Interviewed: An Excerpt Did I see the throne before the royal funeral or afterwards? I guess I never really saw the throne in my vision. The folds of the gown obscured the sapphire. If indeed it was sapphire. I just assumed, I guess. Moses himself had seen the sapphire at Horeb. The violet folds fell limply, out of nowhere, brushed by the wings of the chanting creatures, rustling, like the weeds in Hinnom Valley at dusk. I'm certain that it was close to Uzziah's death. The secluded leper king had long obsessed me. His reign had been so just, so prosperous, so strong. The bilious priests puffed up transparent in their delight as they assured us that the king had been punished for usurping their ritual role. God forgive me, but no God of mine would be praised for anointing such priests! Yet I couldn't be sure that they were wrong, and...if the king could be stricken for one misstep after reigning for forty glorious years, what chance did I have to be spared? Thus, my panic when I heard them chanting kadosh. They fluttered like mutant butterflies. Holy, holy, holy, as in Holy of Holies, as in "Do not touch," as in "Enter at your own peril." Holy as in "Purify yourselves before entering," as in "The whole world is filled with God's glory," and there is no escape. I so wanted to run away as the seraph approached, hot coal in hand, but in a dream, as in life, you are captive to your own terror. Thank God that I could not flee! My life, such as it has...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/poem_isaiah_interviewed_excerpt

Albatross

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:21:00 -0500

Author: ZeekFiction
Posted to Jewcy: June 17, 2008 9:21 am
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Yelena Akhtiorskaya was born in 1985 in Odessa, Ukraine, a city of prodigious talent, and the chauvinisms that follow: To those who left it following the fall of the Soviets, Odessa was "the best city in the world," its men were the funniest (but also criminals), its Opera House and young women the most beautiful. As the Jews left Odessa, so, too, did the intelligentsia: they were the same. Many settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which is where Akhtiorskaya grew up. I am writing this, as an introduction to Akhtiorskaya's "Albatross," trying not to mention Isaac Babel, another storywriter from Odessa concerned with the lapidary, or le mot juste - with putting the perfect word in the perfect place. "Albatross" is a sand grain of a story: A man is abandoned by his wife who shares her name with that long-billed, overgrown gull whose literary presence, thanks to Coleridge, has grown synonymous with "burden." This is Akhtiorskaya's first publication. Unlike her avian inspiration, it portends only great things to come. - Joshua Cohen, Fiction Editor Borya had a heavy way of swallowing: it was as if he were gulping down a large grape. It sounded painful, but was not. It was just his regular way of swallowing. The morning air was thick, and he sipped it. Although it was still early, he'd been buzzing about for hours. He finished the grocery shopping (food list: a bucket of tangerines, packaged raisin cake), cleaned the kitchen after breakfast, watched the washing machine chew, and was on his way to the post office, crumpling the little pink slip in his sweaty fist. The glistening concrete brushed against his muddy downcast eyes, while the sharp sounds of the street forced him to walk faster and faster and - too fast - he was gasping for breath. Borya was...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/albatross_0

Last Summer War, Next Summer Laughter

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:11:00 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: June 16, 2008 8:11 am
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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 India-Pakistan a close second). The Israeli Palestinian Comedy Tour is out again making the rounds, and Israel's Channel 2 just finished its first season of a sitcom about Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Avoda Aravit. Heading the list, however, in terms of both finances and audiences, is Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan: the first comedy about the Arab-Israeli conflict to get a major release since Monty Python's Life of Brian in 1979. People always ask whether it's too early to make a joke about recent disasters. It's the wrong question. Wars and terrorist events, in themselves, are never funny - 9/11 is not funny per se, now or ever. Yet, at a certain moment-say, the moment of Team America: World Police in the case of 9/11 - the event becomes susceptible to a certain type of comic analysis. You don't want to test the funny bone with a broken arm, but as with a physical trauma, surgery and other interventions are possible and necessary immediately, while rehab and detailed diagnostics of the wound must wait until a certain amount of healing has occurred. The wound in the case of the Middle East is not borne of a single discrete trauma. You can point to the Declaration of Independence of Israel in 1948 as that moment, as many Palestinians do, but there are a number of other possible starting points. Some would start with Napoleon's 1798 arrival in Egypt from the first European nation state, others...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/last_summer_war_next_summer_laughter

POEMS: "Alive" plus Mr. Nobody

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:59:10 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: June 12, 2008 9:59 am
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Alive At the hour when the world ceases to be you will be sitting under a plane-tree half unleafed on a lively, noisy avenue nothing around you will have really changed you will still be father, son and lover a dream will nag you like a bit of food lodged between two teeth you will go on watching children, cyclists, dogs asking yourself what love is if you found it, lost it, or if it always escaped you examining memories attentively with an entomologist's precision, bent over an insect, who now sees only reticular surfaces forgetting the creature caught in a fog-drowned park you will think of the fruits in season, of buying a new pair of shoes of the page you read this morning in the bathtub of the windowpanes next door lit up as if on fire which you watched for a long time last night before going to bed and of light's tenderness when you awoke which seemed to stretch the sky extend it to infinity at the hour when the world ceases to be you'll do sums, review hypotheses formulated a thousand times summon up the solutions then you'll get up, distractedly push two or three leaves aside with your foot you'll move away towards nothingness your back turned on nothingness so alive * The incarnations of Mister Nobody I was with two women in the cemetery at Malines poplars were rustling above our heads the Flemish lion flapped against the gray sky I was walking along the railroad tracks a pointer trotting beside me as I whistled a ballad whose lyrics I'd forgotten my father killed himself there one Christmas night I would think of him...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/poems_2

Israeli Fiction: "Raining Neighbors"

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:37:00 -0500

Author: Adam L. Rovner
Posted to Jewcy: June 09, 2008 8:37 am
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One of the most impressive magazines to appear amidst the recent profusion of literary journals in Israel is Masmerim, meaning “nails.” Edited by publishing veterans, Masmerim features the same kind of high caliber writing and slick format of Britain's Granta. Zeek is happy to collaborate with Masmerim’s editors and writers this month to bring American readers the work of new talents Michal Zamir and Zvi Triger. Michal Zamir’s “Raining Neighbors” offers an ironic detachment from tragedy, while Zvi Triger’s “Everybody’s Autobiography Returns,” one part of a trilogy, cloaks grief in the language of technical writing.-- Adam Rovner, translations editor "RAINING NEIGHBORS" Saturday morning. My neighbor was trimming his climbing bush. My neighbor has British roots. In England he studied law or accounting. At about age sixty he developed a thing for gardening. My neighbor doesn’t live in the adjacent apartment, but rather in the penthouse that’s in the building across from me. I laid myself down on the sofa in the living room, and read a book. Is it a coincidence that I was reading Paul Auster? Is it a coincidence that exactly at the moment I took my eyes off my neighbor, he and the small, red hedge trimmer were falling seven stories? What happened afterwards was expected: a scream, seemingly his wife’s. Next: young screams, seemingly his daughters’. In their wake: the screams of curious neighbors from adjacent buildings, and just plain screamers who screamed at the opportunity. Just minutes after that, when the screams subsided (that is to say, when the uproar died...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/israeli_fiction_raining_neighbors_0

Israeli Fiction: "Everybody's Autobiography Returns"

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:35:00 -0500

Author: Adam L. Rovner
Posted to Jewcy: June 09, 2008 8:35 am
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One of the most impressive magazines to appear amidst the recent profusion of literary journals in Israel is Masmerim, meaning “nails.” Edited by publishing veterans, Masmerim features the same kind of high caliber writing and slick format of Britain's Granta. Zeek is happy to collaborate with Masmerim’s editors and writers this month to bring American readers the work of new talents Michal Zamir and Zvi Triger. Michal Zamir’s “Raining Neighbors” offers an ironic detachment from tragedy, while Zvi Triger’s “Everybody’s Autobiography Returns,” one part of a trilogy, cloaks grief in the language of technical writing.-- Adam Rovner, translations editor Everybody's Autobiography Returns (A) Depression Fathers are depressing things. They buy electrical devices, they connect electrical devices, they operate electrical devices, and in the end they return to work. Of all types of people, fathers are the most depressing. They go to work and operate electrical devices; they return from work and operate electrical devices. They go to sleep. They get up and operate electrical devices, go to work and operate electrical devices, and return home and operate electrical devices and go to sleep. Once in a while they...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/israeli_fiction_everybodys_autobiography_returns

The Jewish American Princess--Revisited

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:22:00 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: June 06, 2008 9:22 am
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What ever happened to the Jewish American Princess? Once—from the 1960s until at least the end of the 1980s—the icon of the JAP was all but ubiquitous in American Jewish culture. The girl (yes, she was always a girl, even when she was a woman) Jewish men loved to hate, she was unavoidable: loud-mouthed, aggressive, materialist, niggardly in how she dispensed sexual favors, always a daddy’s girl, and an important American pioneer in the use (and abuse) of cosmetic surgery. From the height of iconographic status in the American Jewish cultural economy—Philip Roth wrote about her; Frank Zappa famously sang about her—the JAP has faded, left to inhabit tired, old jokes. Even on google.com, a search yields little of interest, and certainly nothing of recent vintage about the JAP. To be sure, there have been sightings, and rumors abound that in the suburbs of Chicago or Detroit, let alone in the heimat of JAP-dom—Long Island outside of New York City—the JAP indeed survives and perhaps even thrives. Overheard recently on Long Island in the sanctum sanctorum of Jewish-American materialism, the changing room of Bloomingdale’s: “Oi hate huh. Oi hate huh haeuh.” Translated roughly into English: “I hate her. I hate her hair.” In print, despite the phonetic approximation, we cannot but fail to hear the inflection, the necessary lop-off of words in the monosyllabic JAP language, as if announcing that even the social effort of speaking and communicating is not worth the selfish reserves of the JAP’s energy. But there she is: focused on the exterior—she hates her for her hair. Content always follows...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/jewish_american_princess_revisited

Dreaming with Rodger Kamenetz

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:59:00 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: June 05, 2008 9:59 am
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"A dream provides an exact tincture of the soul...to wake us from a faint-hearted life." So writes Rodger Kamenetz in The History of Last Night's Dream. Kamenetz is probably best known as the poet who accompanied a diverse group of rabbis to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama. He chronicled that journey in The Jew in the Lotus (1994), which both confirmed and strengthened the emerging communal crossover between Judaism and Buddhism. (Full disclosure: that book set me on my path toward the rabbinate.) Since then he's written other books exploring Judaism in a variety of ways, but nothing as groundbreaking as The Jew in the Lotus --until now. Kamenetz is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Louisiana State University, where he also founded the MFA in creative writing program. He's also a poet and, now, a dream therapist. His latest book is simultaneously as thoughtful and cogent as one would expect from a college professor--and as far-out as one would expect from a mystic and a poet. This book challenges the reader not only to think about dreams in a new way, but in so doing to relate to her- or himself anew. For Kamenetz, dreams are a point of connection with the Infinite. Jewish tradition has mistrusted them, sought to pin them down and diminish their uncanny power, since antiquity. But if we can find a new way of relating to our dreams, he says, they may offer us a direct connection with God.—Rachel Barenblat ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/dreaming_rodger_kamenetz

POEMS: "Palestine, A Sestina" plus others

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:56:59 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: June 05, 2008 9:56 am
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IMPROVISATION ON LINES BY ISAAC THE BLIND Only by sucking, not by knowing, can the subtle essence be conveyed- sap of the word and the world's flowing that raises the scent of the almond blossoming, and yellows the bulbul in the olive's jade. Only by sucking, not by knowing. The grass and oxalis by the pines growing are luminous in us-petal and blade- as sap of the word and the world's flowing; a flicker rising from embers glowing; light trapped in the tree's sweet braid of what it was sucking. Not by knowing is the amber honey of persimmon drawn in. An anemone piercing the clover persuades me- sap of the word and the world is flowing across separation, through wisdom's bestowing, and in that persuasion choices are made: But only by sucking, not by knowing that sap of the word through the world is flowing. * PALESTINE: A SESTINA Hackles are raised at the mere mention of Palestine, let alone The Question of-who owns the pain? ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/poems_1

Netanya Fish Fry

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:59:00 -0500

Author: Joel Schalit
Posted to Jewcy: June 04, 2008 9:59 am
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She's dead, now, but I can still hear her speaking as though she were right next to me. "All they ever want to see or hear is something about the fucking Occupation." I could sympathize with my friend, standing next to her one hot summer afternoon, in front of her house near Kikar Hamedinah. If only they could stop expecting it of us. If only we could stop producing it ourselves. If only, I remember thinking on the drive home that night, it didn't need to be written about at all. That was nine years ago. Yet, for the past year, I cannot help but hear Naomi's words again. Writing on the controversy over the selection of Beaufort for an Oscar over The Band's Visit, Tom Tugend indicated his preference for The Band 's Visit because he found it so much happier than Joseph Cedar's noir, anti-war drama. Reprising the theme yet again in a review of Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen's award-winning Jellyfish, Ella Taylor describes the film as" belonging to a new breed of Israeli movies — domestic rather than political in focus, and formally more sophisticated than the realist war dramas and blunt comedies that until recently kept Israeli cinema in the boondocks of international cinema." As much as I would like to agree with both Tugend and Taylor, I'd be hard pressed to see the non-political in yet another new Israeli production. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/netanya_fish_fry

Fiction: Simeon

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:02:42 -0500

Author: ZeekFiction
Posted to Jewcy: June 03, 2008 10:02 am
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Taking its imagery from the legend of the ten tribes of Israel exiled by the Assyrians and lost to the pages of history beyond the River Sambatyon, Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes follows the life-journey of a wandering narrator who encounters a series of displaced persons: the uncle whose endless travels seem romantic but are in fact a camouflage for a life of failure and malaise; the professor whose mastery of many languages can never assuage the anguish of his lost mother tongue; the girl student who may literally be invisible; the young man who spends his night hours obsessively writing and rewriting the slim volume he can never finish. With each encounter the narrator inevitably moves on, dreaming of home, unable to resist the lure of the world’s labyrinth. Tales of the Ten Lost Tribes examines the heart of human longing, and asks the question: Where do we belong? — Tamar Yellin We were on a white ship crossing the Mediterranean; we did not know where we were; infinite wastes of water lay all around us. For weeks we had pursued a disastrous journey. We had been unhappy in Paris and Zurich, unhappy in Venice; my father had crossed Greece with his head in his hands. In Athens he ate a poisoned cuttlefish. On the third night he took us down to the port of Piraeus, and there, with his body purged and his mind empty, he looked out across the black mucilaginous sea. It was his Nebo. He knew he would never enter the promised land. The man at the shipping office was sympathetic. A vacation was no vacation if one was ill. One wanted to be home again, pure and simple. For himself, he always spent his vacations at home. Home is where the heart is, he told us proudly, placing a fist against his ample chest. His office was bare however, a tornado-struck mass of papers covered in dust. Above a shelf...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/simeon

Three Poems from The Brakhot Cycle

Tue, 27 May 2008 11:39:52 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: May 27, 2008 11:39 am
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From The Brakhot Cycle One whose dead lies before him May be in no position to pray or to converse comfortably or even to make plans for the funeral, reschedule his haircut, inform the book group or the bowling league. No matter the circumstance (even if the death was long in coming, if everyone saw that angel peeking through the bedroom keyhole) it's a slap in the face, a splash of cold water that leaves the mourners gasping. Don't expect the behavior the movies have led you to imagine. Bring him simple food -lentils and hard-boiled eggs are customary- and let him grieve. If he tries to offer blessing hush him gently. There's time enough for praise in the infinite stretch of time remaining in the world now lacking one more familiar soul. * What blessing does one make over fruit? "Who creates the fruit of the tree," recognizing the wild Kyrgyz ancestry of the Jonagold, the Macintosh, the Empire, how trunks twisted and gnarled bear something wondrous and strange. "Who encases our tough hearts," palming a mango, tight skin almost bursting over the flamboyant and succulent flesh and the pit with its sharp edges. "Who ripens holiness in its time," as berries ripen by ones or twos or sevens, each cluster the lifecycle in microcosm, from pale green to the red of bitten lips, wanton and inviting. Some say, "Who gives us diverse appetites," thinking breadfruit and carambola and...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/poems_0

Review: Steinski's What Does It All Mean?

Tue, 27 May 2008 08:52:48 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: May 27, 2008 8:52 am
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The issues of our age are increasingly reissues. Many people would rather purchase their pasts than pay the price for a future worth living. We see it on the DVD shelves at the big-box stores, where television shows from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, including ones that were deemed laughable when they were on the air, take up the space formerly reserved for new material. And we see it at Starbucks, where the CDs that move are the ones featuring the same old classic rock and pop that have crowded the radio dial over the past two decades. Even in stores devoted exclusively to the sale of cultural artifacts, a species seemingly destined for the status of endangered species, a good number of each week’s “new releases” are not new at all. It’s enough to make a person seek out a hobby resistant to mass-mediation, like needlepoint or falconry. But all is not lost. With the loss of novelty as the prime mover in sales of records, films, and books – videogames being a signal exception to the trend – comes the opportunity to tell the truth of history with a different slant. We’re so conditioned to pay attention to repackaged culture, even items that we’ve previously owned ourselves, that we are likely to stumble upon work that we missed the first time around. It is now possible to fill in the gaps in our cultural upbringing with greater precision, redeeming the past that should have been ours if only we had known better. Leaving aside the psychological implications of this self-refashioning, perfectly suited to the obsessive profile editing that takes place on social networking sites, it gives us the chance to transform our taste for the better. This is where Steinski’s two-CD collection What Does It All Mean?...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/review_steinskis_what_does_it_all_mean

POEM: "Rita" by Roman Baembaev

Thu, 22 May 2008 08:15:00 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: May 22, 2008 8:15 am
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--These buffoons have lost their minds. Did you see the bill that we got? I asked Rita. --Let's make a baby, Rita said, not listening to a single word. I went up to the window and looked outside. An old toad crossed the courtyard diagonally. Let's make a baby, said Rita. I got dressed and went out. I walked to the beach. The weather kept the animals at home, sitting in front of the TV, chewing and farting, but the seagulls remained outside and were as shrill and annoying as a group of tourists enjoying a hotel breakfast. Out of nowhere an ass appeared, consumed with greed, and tried to push his crap on me for five shekels a kilo. Let's make a baby, said Rita. More than once I've been asked why I don't have children. How am I supposed to know?! I'm not the type who loves a child that has yet to be born. That may change someday. Gita wanted a cat but I didn't. In the end I took care of it. I also tended to Miri's aquarium and looked after Tsipi's dog. Let's make a baby, said Rita. The moment my mother first laid eyes on me, after giving birth, she broke out in a panic: "Oy vey iz mir! Er iz a kopye Volya." The bastards called my uncle Lazy Volya, but he thought of himself as a global ambassador for Micky Mouse. All day he'd walk about with an olive pit in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. He filled the drawers of his table will all kinds of metal: sockets, pipe joints, ball bearings and whatnot. From time to time he'd scrape together some lame toy out of this mess and put it aside to collect dust. He had no money sense. In the end, cancer came and ate right through him. Let's make a baby. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/poem_rita_roman_baembaev

The Gods of Drowning

Wed, 21 May 2008 09:01:00 -0500

Author: Jay Michaelson
Posted to Jewcy: May 21, 2008 9:01 am
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In the forms of meditation practiced by many Westerners, one central practice is simply "being with" everything that arises in the body, mind, heart, etc., neither holding onto anything nor pushing anything away. This is quite different from most Jewish and psychiatric practices, which often seek to change these states--from sadness into joy, for example, or restlessness into peace. And it is entirely different from our basic instinct, which, thanks to eons of evolution, is exactly to hold onto the good stuff and push away the rest. If we didn't do that, we'd never survive. Indeed, self-preservation is surely the purpose of registering stimuli as positive or negative in the first place. Happiness, too, is unnatural. Once again, if we were all perfectly happy with what we already have, we wouldn't strive for more. We wouldn't reproduce, wouldn't compete for scarce resources--and we'd be selected right out of the species. So it's human nature to be somewhat unhappy, and to work to address that unhappiness by taking action, building things, having children, nurturing them, and building cooperative communities of love. All these things feel so right because we've been bred for them. So what the Dalai Lama has called "the art of happiness" is unnatural in its means and its ends. Its means are counter to basic human instinct, and its promised end of happiness is the opposite of our natural (naturally selected) disposition. But given the choice between Buddhist-style being-with and Jewish-style fighting negative emotions, I'll take the Buddha, thanks. Nothing depresses me more than trying to be happy. In my own practice, I've often experienced "being with" negative emotions in a visual way, seeing myself as someone nearly drowning in mud or excrement, but managing to be with it, to stay alive and breathe. For years, this extremely unhelpful image both...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/gods_drowning

Fiction: The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind

Tue, 20 May 2008 08:22:00 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 20, 2008 8:22 am
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...and on the books' pages - not a single letter. --Borges, "In Praise of Darkness" for Margarita Meklina א They said of old Isaac that he didn't go blind, but one day simply stopped opening his eyes. Many believed that Isaac's lids were sealed by angels - with beeswax and honey. To amuse us, Isaac would enumerate the people in the room and describe them - one after another - but would sometimes err, adding those who weren‘t even there. His trade was healing with the laying on of hands, and giving counsel. ב In the synagogue, during communal prayer, his voice would break from our voices, and we - one after another - would fall silent, looking on in astonishment as his prayer ascended. When the service would end, the rabbi would bring forth a cup, so that Isaac could drink his fill, and then accompany him home, propping him up by the elbow. ג In Isaac's home there were many books, and when we would ask how it is he read them, Isaac would answer that he smells every page, and sees what is written just as clearly as if he were reading it with his eyes. When one of us doubted him, Isaac offered to pick a book, open it to any page, and place it into his hands. He smelled the page and read aloud: ד ... and so it is that in the holy days the Creator appears to gaze at all the dishes shattered by Him, and he comes to us, and sees that there's nothing to be joyful about, and weeps for us, and returns to the Heavens, so as to destroy the world. ה Hearing this, we began to weep, for we considered the book's words a dire omen, but Isaac said: "Do not weep, for He appears to us not only in the holy days, but everyday; and every time we are given a chance to convince...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/fiction_dreams_and_prayers_isaac_blind

Review: Live and Become

Mon, 19 May 2008 08:13:00 -0500

Author: Dan Friedman
Posted to Jewcy: May 19, 2008 8:13 am
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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 general: between being a knowing participant in a global film industry in which national allegiances are at most of secondary importance on one hand and being located very specifically in a geo-political and cultural juncture that informs daily life on the other. Eran Kolirin's excellent The Band's Visit (2007) fits so neatly into the seamless supranational film industry that the Hollywood "Academy" would not even accept it into the foreign film category for the Oscars. On the other hand, a film like Gitai's Kedma (2002) is so caught up in the context of contemporary Israeli culture that, despite its quality, its importance beyond Israel is almost impossible to determine. Treading the knife edge of the specific is Live and Become, a dramatic fictional narrative about Schlomo: an Ethiopian Christian caught up in Operation Moses, the 1984 emergency airlift of Ethiopian Jews from the civil war raging around them. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/review_live_and_become

POEM: For the Rabbinical Judge

Thu, 15 May 2008 08:48:06 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: May 15, 2008 8:48 am
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I might have pulled your beard, Santa Claus or Shakespearian king, your black silk coat damasked with mock flowers. You drew an anthropologist's bouquet of questions out of your hat, too warm to wear in the court and placed between us on the judge's bench like a street musician's cup. The scribe entered and exited. Extras dozed on their feet until called to witness the scene. I was surprised by my part. The newspaper says you usually rule in favor of the husband but I want to thank you for commissioning today's freedom scroll, in which my name was spelled wrong with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet instead of the fifth. You ordered the scribe to correct the mistake, to turn the aleph of beginning into a hieroglyph signaling a decorative end to the marriage. And thanks to the frowning gentleman who sat on one side of you wearing a Lincoln stovepipe. He folded the official paper into an origami bird, and cut it with a scissors because damage authenticates experience. Thank you for asking my husband whether he had promised to divorce me, for asking my husband again whether he had promised to divorce me, for asking my husband until repetition cleared the air. Thank you for allowing me to bare my head until the end of the ceremony. Thank you for explaining that a head covering on a woman is the custom among you, not us. Thank you for advising me not to move my hands when my husband dropped the tattooed bird into my cupped palms and we flew on. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/for_the_rabbinical_judge

Jewish Architecture: An Interview with Daniel Libeskind

Thu, 15 May 2008 08:38:24 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: May 15, 2008 8:38 am
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Wowed by the example of Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim, museums around the world have raced to commission brilliant, experimental architects to build structures at least as noteworthy as their collections. Architect Daniel Libeskind has become the star of the Jewish museum world with his stunning designs for the Jewish Museum Berlin, Danish Jewish Museum, and now the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum. Unique in being a museum without a permanent collection, the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum has, for over twenty years, devoted itself to exhibitions that explore contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture. Libeskind's new building, opening June 8, 2008, will allow the museum to remain flexible in defining Jewish identity by offering a variety of differently shaped and purposed spaces, including ones specially designed for music, film, and hands-on art education, as well as the more typical white-wall galleries. Daniel Libeskind has become best-known for winning the World Trade Center design competition (and the resultant brouhaha). Yet his most important work may well be found elsewhere, ranging from the severe angles and sharp edges of the Royal Ontario Museum to the graceful, curving, almost bowed forms of his Reflections project in Singapore to the San Francisco museum with its almost aggressive blue beacon jutting out from the shell of an old water pumping station. Zeek talked with Libeskind about creating a specifically Jewish space for the San Francisco museum in the conversation that follows. ZEEK: I've had an ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/interview_daniel_libeskind

Which Birthright? Why Choosing Home over Homeland May Not Be So Bad

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:36:27 -0500

Author: Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Posted to Jewcy: May 13, 2008 2:36 am
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Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, American Jewry has been privy to many (perhaps too many) sociological surveys taking its collective pulse. Surveys have covered everything from attitudes toward intermarriage, Jewish education, politics, literacy, beliefs, and practice. Recently another survey has appeared written by the pre-eminent Jewish sociologist Steven M. Cohen in conjunction with his younger colleague, Ari Y. Kelman, entitled Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and their Alienation from Israel. The study offers a provocative quantitative analysis regarding young American Jews' attitudes toward Israel. Cohen and Kelman's study shows the first signs of erosion in unflinching American Jewish support of Israel. It's a trend that may have started in the aftermath of the first Lebanon War in the mid-1980s and is, in many ways, predictable, perhaps inevitable. The generation of Jews who experienced the establishment of the Jewish State is now over the age of sixty-five. Those with memories of the war in 1967 are approaching fifty. Jews under the age of forty only know Israel as a much more complicated, and compromised, country: an occupying power engaged in a bloody struggle with a largely disempowered and stateless population. Such a battle, while intense and dangerous, is quite different from the more straight-forward struggle of fending off invading Arab armies. Whatever one may think of the present dilemma, or even whether "occupation" is an accurate description of what Israelis call "the situation" (ha-mazav), the experience of Israel for American Jews under the age of forty is, and should be, categorically different from their parents. The reality of this change can be illustrated in various ways. When...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/which_birthright_why_choosing_home_over_homeland_may_not_be_such_bad_thing

Homeland for the Taking: Birthright Israel

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:26:00 -0500

Author: Aviva Kasowski
Posted to Jewcy: May 13, 2008 2:26 am
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Young adults today aren't satisfied with a status quo existence. We want to find our true calling, and hopefully wealth and stability along the way. Unfortunately, real life isn't always conducive to finding the answers we seek. Immersed in this post-college struggle to find a meaningful and productive life, I found myself with a diverse group of other twenty-somethings on an Israel Experts Birthright trip. Some of us came simply for the free vacation; others hoped to trace their roots and culture to help them find what is "true" and "real." What we didn't expect was to find ourselves in a charged atmosphere of questioning minds, as fertile-and at times illuminating-as the desert that was made to bloom. As it turned out, all of us were "seekers," which is a nice way of saying that we were a little bit lost. I called myself a writer, although writing barely supported my coffee addiction. Before we even checked baggage, I met a girl who had just lost her fashion job along with her boyfriend (who also happened to be her boss), an insurance adjuster who hated his work, and a medical student who was taking a year off to work on a farm in Florida. Most of us had danced around the idea of a Birthright trip before, but avoided it for various reasons. Some thought it would be too much like propaganda. Others had never felt entirely comfortable in Jewish groups. Still others (or their parents) were afraid of ending up on the evening news. The fact that we were finally able to sign on to Birthright (and actually board the plane) was a testament to our development as individuals; we felt sure we could walk away with our authentic selves intact no matter what the trip threw at us. Luckily, the trip didn't require us to exude a happy-go-lucky attitude. "All we want is for you to ask questions," Joe...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/homeland_taking_birthright_israel

Review: The Counterfeiters

Mon, 12 May 2008 09:17:00 -0500

Author: Ethan S.
Posted to Jewcy: May 12, 2008 9:17 am
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Markovics plays Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch, a character based on the real-life Russian Jew and world-class counterfeiter Salomon Smolianoff who had the misfortune of being captured by the Nazis during World War II. Like the real-life Smolianoff, Sorowitsch is eventually given special treatment in the Sachenhausen camp to mass-counterfeit the pound sterling and the dollar. Throughout this Oscar-award winning film, Markovics never lets that scowl leave his face, even when he cracks a half-smile. Sally's abject refusal to let his guard down, whether at a Monte Carlo poker table or facing the humiliation of having an SS agent urinate on him, forms the core of The Counterfeiters, one of the most daring, innovative Holocaust films ever made. As Spielberg proved, it's easy to hate monstrous Nazi guards and sympathize with abused prisoners. It's much harder to depict a Jew in a camp who's just as Machiavellian as the guards, and it's even harder to depict the S.S. as a pathetic, almost Keystone Kops-esque set of mental weaklings. It's true that there is much in this movie that will initially dismay the Jewish viewer. The unusually multi-dimensional approach to the Nazis may alienate some who reject any shred of humanity in Nazism altogether. The movie's implicit thesis that, no matter who you are, in a life-or-death situation like World War II your principle motivation is going to be your own survival, will dismay those of us who prefer death-defying moral heroics. All I can say to these points is: watch the film. There's a payoff for watching The Counterfeiters to the end. It turns out that Sally, who seems willing to do anything to survive, actually has a political conscience. He not only picks the right...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/review_counterfeiters

POEM: "All" by Agi Mishol

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:00:00 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 08, 2008 9:00 am
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Life that swirls in the scraps of swallows in the early evening, reaching out red from within the flower, sprawling lazily along the entire length of the cat, barking and then listening for a moment to itself within the dog, fluttering in the gecko's transparent belly, hiding behind the appearance of separate forms moving inside the wheat or frozen in a trampled badger's body on one side of the road all, all of this - life that defines itself and deconstructs in philosophers' minds twisting in the bodies of spring vipers or whispered by a cold carp, its mystery glistening in the geometry of spider webs, endlessly gushing, green, from the earth or wandering restless in the bodies of storks all - rustling in thickets, strangling the lovely homes with clutching ivy, steaming through the window from the pots of barley soup, dispersed in the semen scent of flowering carob rising in bellies and in poems the length of a cigarette, Life that exhales now between the ribs in the heart's harmonica all of this -- inside you -- blood and bone inside me now. Translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/poem

Israel at Sixty

Thu, 08 May 2008 08:15:00 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 08, 2008 8:15 am
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Qassam rockets rain down on Negev towns; suicide bombings have reappeared; Israel is maintaining a blockade on the Gaza Strip with periodic invasions that are growing in severity; Hezbollah is re-arming itself in a chaotic Lebanon; and the fear of a nuclear Iran remains. It seems an odd time to say that Israel is now in the best position it has ever been to normalize its existence. But that is precisely the case, and Israel's sixtieth birthday is the perfect opportunity to see this. Israel has been at the center of global intrigue for so long, it's hard now to recall the idealism in which it was born. But sixty years ago, the first citizens of Israel dreamt of a country that was both Jewish and democratic, and that was welcomed fully into the family of nations and at peace with its neighbors. Today, the view of Israel around the world is at its lowest point ever. Yet it has also been offered full recognition and normal relations by the entire Arab world, and all the negative press it has received has not eroded the general support in the West for its continued existence as a Jewish state. Had this Arab offer been proposed even twenty years ago, most Israelis would have wept in joy at the prospect and leapt at it. But today, Israel is hesitant to extend its hand to that offer, even while it has acknowledged it as a positive step. What's changed, and how can we change it back? Living By The Sword Beginning with the very birth of the country in 1948, Israelis have lived each day with the sense that their neighbors want to destroy them. One can debate whether Arab determination toward that goal has waned, but that doesn't change the very real feelings Israelis have or their historical basis. Modern historical research has shown that the Arab effort in 1948 to eliminate Israel in its infancy was half-hearted, but the war still cost Israel one percent of its population....

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/israel_sixty

Review: Lucette Lagnado's The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit

Tue, 06 May 2008 08:15:00 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 06, 2008 8:15 am
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Lucette Lagnado is this year's recipient of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Her family memoir is reviewed by Tamar Yellin who won last year's prize for fiction. Although only established in 2006, the Sami Rohr Prize has established itself as the pre-eminent prize for Jewish writers not least because it is worth $100,000 for a writer of, in alternating years, Jewish fiction and Jewish non-fiction. -- Dan Friedman, Zeek Associate Editor The author: Lagnado Towards the end of Lucette Lagnado's memoir of her family's flight from Cairo to America, she describes the celebration of the Passover seder in her parents' Brooklyn home: the sorting of the rice, the polishing of the silverware, the candlelit search for leaven. Above all comes the retrieval out of the basement, from one of the twenty-six suitcases they brought with them on the boat from Alexandria and which, years later, still remain to be unpacked, of the porcelain dishes, liqueur glasses and tiny spoons with which they taste the haroseth. Yet at the climax of all these preparations, "No matter how loudly we sang, our holiday had become not a celebration of the exodus from Egypt, but the inverse - a longing to return to the place we were supposedly glad to have left." This is the paradox which sits at the heart of Lagnado's Sami Rohr Prize-winning book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: the paradox of exile. Jews who have left Egypt, who sing praises to God for having brought...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/review_lucette_lagnados_man_white_sharkskin_suit

Roundtable: The Synagogue/ Israeli Politics Mash-Up

Tue, 06 May 2008 08:15:00 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 06, 2008 8:15 am
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Zeek Contributing Editor (and Velveteen Rabbi) Rachel Barenblat asked Rabbis Camille Angel (Reform), Lynn Gottlieb (Renewal), Fred Guttman (Reform), and Meyer Schiller (Orthodox/Hasidic) to discuss the impact of the Israeli state and its politics on their rabbinate. Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with? Schiller: I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general. The right of Orthodoxy and the Modern Orthodox share a certain fear and demonization of the Other. It's difficult to offer a different perspective than that of the comunities in which I live. I try, but by the time I come in contact with students, attitudes are already set. It's very difficult to move people from a sense of victimhood, from a sense that there's one side to the conflict and the failure of the world to recognize that is an indication of the world's persistent antisemitism. Zeek: Do you think there's a sense in which your own background, coming originally from a secular family and choosing Orthodoxy as a pre-teen, has an impact on how you approach this? Schiller:...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/roundtable_rabbis_discuss_impact_israel_their_rabbinate

Interview with Beaufort Director Joseph Cedar

Thu, 01 May 2008 08:50:51 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 01, 2008 8:50 am
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Towards the end of Joseph Cedar's Beaufort, the first Israeli film nominated for an Academy Award since 1984, an activist opposed to the war in Lebanon excoriates himself on a television talk show for the death of his son, Ziv, a bomb specialist in the Israel Defense Forces. By having this grieving parent blame himself rather than generals or politicians for what happened to his child, Joseph Cedar makes a distinct ideological gesture, underlining how Israel as a whole is responsible for the continuation of the now sixty-year-old violent status quo. And by placing the responsibility for communicating such a message on the shoulders of a peace advocate, Cedar makes it clear why he believes we ought to take seriously what liberal Israelis like Ziv's father have to say. In his earlier feature-length films, Time of Favor (2001), and Campfire (2004), as in Beaufort, the New York-born director created studies of Israel's internal struggles so detailed and accurate that they could almost function as academic monographs. Always guided by an identifiable set of political positions, Cedar's commitments consistently structure his narratives, providing a sense of optimism and resolution at every hopeless juncture. In each instance, Joseph Cedar's outlook and artistry are mutually reinforcing, making his stories speak to us that much more strongly. We walk away from his films understanding Israel better because we saw it through his eyes. I...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/interview_beaufort_director_joseph_cedar

Three Poems by Rivka Miriam

Thu, 01 May 2008 08:15:00 -0500

Author: rchess
Posted to Jewcy: May 01, 2008 8:15 am
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HIS GRANDFATHER'S FACE And when the man saw that his face was the face of his grandfather he began speaking to himself out loud across the generations and his wife breathing in their wide bed made her eyes slits the palm of her hand over them like a tent to catch sight of him from the distance. * I REVEALED TO THE FISH I told the fish his own silent name. He formed it with his mouth till the water read his lips till the water spread his name all over steaming into cloud beating against the shore drying into nothingness. And nothingness didn't know how to pronounce the fish's name though a silent name it was. * QUESTION In each of the seasons of the year the question was asked differently and the people erred in thinking there were many questions rather than the same one repeated question that isn't in need of reply its aim only to pass over the surface of faces, changing their expressions raising and lowering their lips and eyebrows to the sound like a pencil marking vibrations of heat and cold ...

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Fiction: An Excerpt from Nava Semel's IsraIsland

Thu, 01 May 2008 05:25:00 -0500

Author:
Posted to Jewcy: May 01, 2008 5:25 am
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Nava Semel's IsraIsland imagines in one of its three sections what would have happened had the historical figure of Major Mordecai Manuel Noah, the most important American Jew in the first half of the nineteenth century, succeeded in creating his planned "city of refuge for the Jews"-- Ararat--on Grand Island, today a suburb of Buffalo. Her ingenious vision of Jewish autonomy on American soil offers an Israeli perspective on the alternate history genre employed most recently by Michael Chabon in his best-selling The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Semel's novel takes as its point of departure the success, rather than the failure, of Noah's Ararat. In this excerpt, Simon, a paparazzi, is assigned to dig up dirt on the Jewish female presidential candidate, a descendant of Major Noah. At the same time, Simon tries to uncover the secret to his lover's ambivalence about the Jewish island state. To learn more about Nava Semel and her work, please read the interview which serves as a companion piece to this excerpt. -- Adam Rovner, Zeek translations editor "The Future Is Already Here": an excerpt from IsraIsland By Nava Semel. Translated by Anthony Berris Everyone says it's an unusual place. The only state in the U.S. I've never visited. So that's it, partner, I'm taking the first flight to IsraIsland. Don't change the apartment locks yet. I haven't left a note or a message on the answering machine because I was sure you'd try and dissuade me from going. Not because you see this kind of assignment as despicable, and not even because you could care less if I screw up the presidential candidate's meteoric career, but simply because...

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Interview with Israeli Author Nava Semel

Thu, 01 May 2008 05:25:00 -0500

Author: Adam L. Rovner
Posted to Jewcy: May 01, 2008 5:25 am
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Journalist and playwright Mordecai Manuel Noah's proto-Zionist scheme to settle a Jewish colony on Grand Island in New York met with resistance from both Jewish and Christian leaders when it was proposed in 1825. Though it sounds preposterous today, historians of the era suggest that Noah in fact had every reason to suspect that a territorial solution to Jewish economic misery and religious persecution would succeed in America. But though Noah willed it, it remained a dream. No one filed on to his ark. Today, the one remaining reminder of Noah's dream is a carved cornerstone for the unrealized Jewish micronation of "Ararat." The stone still exists today behind protective glass in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. Semel recently discussed with me her fascination with Noah and his impact on her alternate history novel, IsraIsland, excerpted in this issue . This month, as we celebrate Israel's sixtieth anniversary, Semel's novel can serve as a provocative reflection on the hopes that have been met, and the promises that remain unfulfilled, by a country whose modern prophet was another journalist and playwright, Theodor Herzl. -- Adam Rovner, Zeek translations editor Q: As an Israeli, how did you become interested in Noah's project? What caught my attention from the beginning was the date of the founding of Ararat, September 15, 1825. That's my birthday. ...

Read this article in its entirety at: http://www.jewcy.com/post/interview_israeli_author_nava_semel