by Susan Reimer-Torn on May 12, 2012
I returned to my native New York City after spending twenty-two years in self-exile, working and raising a family in Paris. During those decades away, I was on the run from my family and friends’ obsession with the Jewish Question.
When I took off for France while still in my twenties, I was in search of the larger world. Above all, I was a rebel against my father’s militant, Orthodox religious observance. I wanted to live, work, think, raise my children, practice journalism in a place where not everything was measured in terms of its impact on Jews. A secular, sophisticated culture, where no one would raise their eyebrows in disapproval of my iconoclastic ways, awaited me.
A couple of decades have gone by and now I’m back. And here’s the thing: I’m no longer fighting the obsession. The truth is that rarely does a day go by when I am not taken up in some region of mind, body, or spirit with something having to do with yidishkayt. [click to continue…]
by Nicholas Jahr on May 9, 2012
I’m a little behind the curve on this (as ever), but the end of April saw the return to the internet after nearly two years MIA of the KassaNostra, surely the world’s best-named anonymous folk music blogger. Where was this mysterious figure? Checking out the night life in Havana? Rubbing out their enemies in time for their son’s bris? Witness protection? Who knows. I’m just glad they’re back. (And I’ll use the third-person plural as a gender-neutral singular until we all agree on something better, dammit.)
This time out we’ve been graced with a post on Thina Sizwe, a South African freedom song [click to continue…]
by Alyssa Goldstein on May 5, 2012
A few days ago, liberal Zionist poster-child Peter Beinart came to Bard to give a talk. I haven’t read Beinart’s book, though I do follow his website Open Zion. I’ll be straight-up about the fact that I’m not a fan of liberal Zionism, and I didn’t expect to agree with just about anything Beinart said. However, given his recent popularity, I guess I did expect something a little more. . . impressive. He spoke for only half an hour, with only a slightly longer time at the end for questions. Nevertheless, for someone who spoke underwhelmingly for a short time, he did manage to leave me boiling with anger. I suppose that’s a sort of accomplishment.
Beinart started rolling out the gold right from the start, saying that diaspora Jews would find it difficult to maintain their Jewish identity without Israel’s revival of Hebrew as a living language. Not only did I fail to see the connection, but this also seemed rather insulting to diaspora Jewish identity in the past and present, as if Yiddish and Judaeo-Spanish and every other Jewish language never counted. [click to continue…]
by Lawrence Bush on May 5, 2012
I’m at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, here on a short break to allow the healing power of music work its wonders on me. Yesterday I visited Congo Square, in Louis Armstrong Park, where slaves here in the deep Plantation South were permitted, over the decades, to gather and drum and dance and develop an impromptu marketplace.
Here are the origins of jazz — and here’s where America’s Burning Bush is rooted.
I wept a little as I stood before this sculpture by Adewale Adenle, a Nigerian artist. I shed a few more tears a couple of hours later, standing before the Jazz & Heritage Stage watching an African dance troupe. There is no shade at this stage, and the the clouds had dispersed, and after about twenty minutes of standing there baking — but with my water and my straw hat and my freedom to leave and seek shade or even air-conditioning — my wife said to me, “Can you imagine slaving in this kind of sun and heat all day long every day?” [click to continue…]
I returned to my native New York City after spending twenty-two years in self-exile, working and raising a family in Paris. During those decades away, I was on the run from my family and friends’ obsession with the Jewish Question.
