Jul

19

2024

David Klion (contributing editor): The New York Intellectuals—a heavily Jewish scene, formed around Cold War liberalism and high modernist literary tastes, that profoundly shaped everything from art criticism to foreign policy—have both generated and received a ton of press in the decades since their postwar peak. Their lingering influence over our contemporary political discourse runs from left-wing publications like Dissent and The New York Review of Books to right-wing publications like Commentary and Tablet. Neoconservatism, the subject of my ongoing book project, essentially began as a dissident branch of the New York Intellectuals. Jewish Currents, though it has its earliest roots in the Moscow-aligned Communist Party that the New York Intellectuals abhorred, nonetheless owes an immense debt to the forms of argumentation they pioneered.

It can be hard to find a fresh angle on such a well-trodden topic, but Ronnie Grinberg, a historian at the University of Oklahoma, has succeeded with Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals, published earlier this year. A rare work of academic history with crossover appeal to more mainstream readers, Write Like a Man is also the first book to give full attention to the fraught gender dynamics that shaped the New York Intellectuals. Most of the group was male, defined by names like Lionel Trilling, Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Irving Howe. Grinberg not only gives fair due to the most prominent women in the group—chiefly Hannah Arendt, Elizabeth Hardwick, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, and Midge Decter—she also ingeniously demonstrates how gender shaped the actual writing produced by both male and female New York Intellectuals.

The title comes from a killer 1963 quote from NYRB co-founder Jason Epstein: “With women in that crowd, the first thing you thought about was whether they were good-looking and if you could sleep with them. But if a woman could write like a man, that was enough.” To Grinberg, “writing like a man” refers to a mode of rigorous, swaggering, aggressive argumentation rooted in the legendary cafeteria alcoves of then all-male City College, where many of the future New York Intellectuals spent the 1930s engaged in verbal duels with Stalinists. It’s a style still recognizable today, and Grinberg portrays it as a means of assimilation for the sons of poor Yiddish-speaking immigrants trying to assert their masculinity in an America that stereotyped Jews as meek and effeminate. Grinberg’s female subjects, as the Epstein line suggests, held their own in the group because they were able to master this style—though as Grinberg also shows, the women in the scene who came from different backgrounds (either as gentiles or, in Arendt’s case, as a German Jewish emigre with formidable Old World academic credentials) received more deference from their male peers than the shtetl-descended women who were often treated simply as wives.

Diana Trilling, who along with Decter was one of the few representatives of the latter type who gradually asserted her own reputation as a public intellectual, is Grinberg’s most compelling character and something of a test case for her argument. Resented and often dismissed by the men and women of the group alike, and not always without reason, Diana Trilling’s most enduring legacy might be as an astute critic of her own social milieu.

Whether or not one is fully persuaded by Grinberg’s definition of masculine prose, Write Like a Man is among the most enjoyable and impressively researched books on its subject, brimming with colorful anecdotes and unexpected insights on every page. Grinberg has both redefined and reignited interest in the New York Intellectuals, and I look forward to citing her often.

Cynthia Friedman (managing director): If you are in New York City before July 28th, I highly recommend that you see the Met’s exhibit on The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism. The show collates a breathtaking variety of art to explore how Black artists in Harlem, then at the vanguard of creative production, depicted different areas of life during the political and cultural upheavals of the first half of the 20th century. The exhibit rooms—each themed on a broad subject—provide nuanced framing that is instructive in guiding the viewer through the breadth of work included.

In the room about family and society, the curators point out the artists’ portrayal of elders with dignity and interiority, in contrast to popular national media depictions; the presence of queer networks; and the complex coexistence of the radical fight for racial justice alongside the community’s push for assimilation and conservative social values. In another set of works dedicated to artistic freedom, the curators insist on the importance of spaces and mentors—often in historically Black colleges and universities—that supported Black artists in creating nonfigural art, such as landscapes and still life paintings, in defiance of societal expectations for their work to consistently be overtly political.

As I walked through the different rooms, I began to recognize the names and distinctive styles of the artists. In some of his portraits—including of writer and philosopher Alain Leroy Locke and renowned civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois—Winold Reiss used pastel to mix detailed realism with minimalist sketch. Archibald J. Motley, Jr. painted social scenes, such as jazz clubs, picnics, and the streets of Chicago and Paris, with dynamic movement and smooth, vivid colors. Laura Wheeler Waring’s portraits of young women, such as “Girl in a Green Cap,” are done with soft brush strokes that invite a sense of intimacy; the same is true of a still life of roses, set on a table in a transparent vase. William H. Johnson, whose portraits and scenes unfurl boldly along one flat plane, invites the eye to linger on each detail. This is just a small fraction of the array of techniques and themes on display, and it doesn’t capture the sense of significance and beauty in wandering through the comprehensive whole. For that experience, I recommend seeing for yourself.

Mitch Abidor (contributing writer): The British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is enjoying something of a moment. While their most famous work, The Red Shoes (1948), has been popular since it premiered, many of their lesser-known films have been re-released over the past couple of years and garnering more attention. For instance, The Small Back Room (1949), a study of a tormented explosives expert, is currently showing at Film Forum in a new restoration. Unlike their best-known movies, it features all the elements of a postwar film noir—the dark shading of both the cinematography and the characters’ actions. (If you miss its theatrical showing, you can watch it on the invaluable Criterion Channel, along with several of their other films.) The duo’s entire oeuvre is also the subject of a fascinating new film essay, Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger. Though directed by David Hinton, it’s really the work of Martin Scorsese, who has played an enormously important role in promoting the pair. Indeed, Made in England consists of Scorsese sitting center-screen and discussing clips from every film in the Powell-Pressburg canon with great insight and enthusiasm.

They were, in many ways, an unlikely couple. Powell, who was born in England, started working in film as a young man, taking on various roles for big-budget silent spectacles shot in France, until he was promoted to direct British films called “quota quickies”—cheap movies produced to fulfill the requirement that a certain percentage of films shown in Britain were made by native filmmakers in native studios. After a few years of this he met Pressburger, a Hungarian who had worked as a screenwriter in Germany until forced to flee when Hitler assumed power; he escaped to France, and then to England. Their earliest films, shot during the war, were mainly expressions of love for Britain, its people and its ways. The greatest of these works—and one that Scorsese explains influenced his own filmmaking—was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). Its epic length belies its movingly personal story of friendship and love across a lifetime.

Once the war ended, they needed to move beyond propaganda films, and they truly hit their stride with The Red Shoes—a film that, as unlikely as it might sound, Scorsese tells us influenced the making of his movie Raging Bull (1980); apparently Scorsese considered De Niro’s boxing moves to be the counterpart of the dance that dominates The Red Shoes. Scorsese is especially good on films like Black Narcissus (1947), the team’s only film based on an outside source (Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel of the same name). He points out the brilliant and subdued use of color, as well as the influence of great painters on its palette.

While Made in England is a gift to fans of the works it considers, it can be appreciated even by those not familiar with them. Scorsese gives a master class in how to watch a film, and how every choice made by a director matters. A hardened auteurist, Scorsese is a believer in the director as the sole author of a film, even if here he relents a bit by granting Pressburger—primarily a screenwriter—some agency. As a result, he fails to discuss the films’ fabulous ensemble casting and give proper attention to the actors who appear and reappear, like the great Anton Walbrook. But Made in England can be forgiven for this. It is a warm and intelligent tribute to two masters of the seventh art.

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Weekly Parshah Commentary

Over the course of each year, Jews read the Five Books of Moses in their entirety—covering one parshah, or section, every week on Shabbat morning. In this moment when many in our community have expressed an unprecedented alienation from most Jewish institutions, alongside an urgent need for spiritual fortification, we’ve begun a series of brief commentaries on the weekly parshah, written by a rotating group of Jewish Currents contributors and appearing here in the Shabbat Reading List. The Hebrew word “lidrosh” means both “to interpret” and “to demand,” suggesting that by interpreting a text, we stake a claim to it, and ultimately assert that the text’s meaning is not nearly as fixed as we may have thought—and the world around us not nearly as static as we’ve been taught to believe.

As this experiment unfolds, please reply to this email to let us know what you think.

Parshat Balak

Over the recent decades of Jewish dominance in Israel/Palestine, Zionist ideologues have drawn strength from a reading of the Torah as granting the Jews an exclusive and immutable title to this land. But a careful reading of the text itself suggests the Israelite claim on the territory is contingent and enmeshed with the valid claims of other peoples.

This week’s parshah, Balak, opens with a strategic alliance between two such peoples, Moab and Midian, in response to the threatening arrival of the Israelites at their doorstep. This pact takes place at a time of regional instability in and around Canaan—and not only because of the looming presence of the conquering Israelites. The region is home to a complex swirl of small clans and competing powers, divisible into two main groups. First there is the old guard—the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, and the Jebusites—which, according to Genesis, had resided in the land since the time after the Flood. Then there are several newer peoples, which date back only as far as the time of Abraham and descend from him and his family: Moab and Midian, as well as Edom, Amalek, and Ammon.

Both the old-timers and the newcomers had carved out territory for themselves, and so this crowded ensemble had engaged in its share of conquest and bloodshed. The Moabites, the protagonists of this week’s parshah, have felt the brunt of it: At the end of last week’s parshah, we learn that they had recently suffered major territorial losses to the Amorite King Sihon. This military defeat is key context for the political dynamics explored in our parshah. The Torah describes the Moabite King Balak as “king of Moab at that time,” implying, as per the Midrash Tanhuma, that he was newly appointed to the role. Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman, commonly known as the Ramban, points out the connection between Balak’s rise to power and the political instability caused by the Israelite military victories: The Moabites are in need of leadership because the Amorites, their occupying power, have just been soundly vanquished by the people of Israel.

There is a tragic irony to the narrative of this week’s parshah, which describes the Moabites’ fear of the Israelites and their subsequent frantic attempts to neutralize them. In truth, Israel has no designs on the Moabites’ territory and is even under a divine order to leave them alone. (Indeed, except in cases where they feel threatened, such as with Amalek, the Israelites are generally peaceful toward those with whom they have a sense of kinship and shared history. Thus, when the Israelites are denied passage through the land of Edom, for example, they simply turn away and seek another route, while against Sihon, the conquering Amorite, with whom they do not share a familial or historical bond, they choose war.) Why, then, does Moab fear Israel? Perhaps they see the Israelites as indiscriminate warmongers and, not knowing about the divine commandment against massacring them, assume they are next in line for slaughter.

But according to some accounts (for example, in the book of Judges), the Israelites had diplomatic communications with Moab akin to those with Edom, and explained that they came in peace. It is possible, then, that the Moabites did not fear conquest at all but rather the more quotidian demographic pressures on their resources. Indeed, in the opening verses of our parshah, we learn that “Moab was alarmed because the people was so numerous,” lamenting to the Midianites, “Now this horde will lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass of the field”; while this is generally read as a metaphorical expression of concern about impending violence, it could be taken more literally as a fear of losing grazing and crop land. Another suggestive clue is the verb ”vayakotz,” used by the Torah to characterize Moab’s feelings about the Israelites; it is often translated as “dread,” but it is the same root used to describe the Egyptians’ disgust with a growing Israelite population and Rebecca’s disgust with Esau’s Canaanite wives. Perhaps this is not an expression of mortal terror so much as xenophobia.

While these complex and ambiguous dynamics offer today’s reader no neat moral instruction, it is clear that this is no simple narrative of Jewish triumphalism over the “gentile.” It is true that the Torah contains horrible divine injunctions against certain clans in the land of Canaan, and we ought to wrestle with these while rejecting the Israelites’ notion that peace depends on familial lineage. Still, the text’s interest in these more precise political distinctions—and its evident sympathy for the Moabites and other peoples in the territory—suggests an understanding that others’ claims to life and land deserve respect.

Avi Garelick is a researcher and organizer based in Washington Heights, New York.