teams up with a chart-topping Evangelical Christian who does this?

Find out on Monday’s episode of Vox Tablet. You won’t be disappointed.

In next week’s episode of Vox Tablet, Auslander speaks with host Sara Ivry about the new novel, and about how terrible we are at dealing with troublesome history. Here’s a preview: an anecdote he shared about a walking tour he took in Bremen, Germany, a few years ago. His guide proudly points out Stars of David that have recently been affixed above the door frames of homes once owned by Jews. Auslander does not share her enthusiasm.

You can hear the rest of the interview on Monday.

Whether you find the jokes funny or not, it seems clear that Disney the man still has a hold on the popular imagination. On next Monday’s episode of Vox Tablet, radio producer (and former animation participant) Eric Molinsky, who also draws all the art you see on these Vox Tablet previews, tries to figure out if the complaints of anti-Semitism are legitimate, and whether or not we should care.

For more music, and for the fairly remarkable back story on this project (Heschel’s life story, and Schechter’s too), tune in tomorrow for the latest edition of Vox Tablet.

Here’s a hint:

You can find out more about Weide and about Woody Allen on tomorrow’s podcast, so stay tuned. Oh, and answer after the jump.

That’s John Cusack and Dianne Wiest in 1994′s Bullets Over Broadway.

A century later, history and literature professor Nathaniel Deutsch has created the first English-language translation of the questionnaire, along with extensive commentary. In the course of his research, he thought it might be possible to pick up where An-sky left off by circulating the survey among some Hasidic communities in Brooklyn. As was the case with his predecessor, he tells Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry, certain historical contingencies interfered with the project.

Hear the rest on Monday.

There is a more intimately heart-breaking side to this story, which pertains to the condition in which the Grade apartment was found after Inna’s death. It was virtually impassible; papers and books cloaked in a thick layer of dust occupied every surface and spilled out of cupboards and drawers. There were signs of pest infestations. Paramedics apparently struggled for hours to make a pathway so they could remove Inna’s body. YIVO executive director Jonathan Brent is one of the few people who was allowed limited access to the apartment in the immediate aftermath of Inna Grade’s death, and the impoverishment and decay he saw depressed him immensely. And yet alongside that decay were also clear signs of the vibrant minds that once occupied the place, and that, too, has stayed with Brent. Brent is the guest of Monday’s episode of Vox Tablet. He speaks passionately with host Sara Ivry about Chaim Grade’s importance as a writer, and of his legacy. Here, Brent recounts one of the discoveries he made in perusing the Grade bookshelves during a visit:

Related: Keeper of the Flame [Tablet Magazine]

In the manner of Margo True and Joe Posnanski, two bloggers who were up for the Blogging award and graciously congratulated The Scroll on its win, here are links to some of Fox’s winning podcasts and some of Eskin’s runner-up entries. While they are quite different in subject matter, they have in common excellence in production values, and a delightful, playful intelligence on the part of the hosts. Enjoy! I did.

Are Poets Lazy Bastards? [Poetry]
Meat Wants Sweet [Poetry]
My Son Is Killing Me [The New Yorker]
Drowning in Information [The New Yorker]
Earlier: Tablet Wins Digital ASME
Tablet Wins Digital ASME for Best Podcast

One offering that caught our eye (or, rather, ear) is Feed the Monster, Stephanie Ehrlich’s one-woman musical about an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who, in the 1960s, launches a career as a rock star with this funky hit:

Ehrlich is also a formerly Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, though, according to her, the similarities stop there. We tracked her down to find out more about the play.

Feed the Monster is a musical, one-woman show. Is it cabaret-style, or is there a narrative?
Oh, there’s definitely a story. It’s about this aging rocker, Rita Emerson, circa 1985, and she’s looking back at her heyday in the Sixties. She’s a nice Jewish girl, grew up in an Orthodox family in Brooklyn, and then became a rock star overnight. Then her star falls, and she’s trying to get it back, and she does get it back. She ends up back in Brooklyn, becoming a Jewish gospel singer.

How did this play come about?
I started to sing around 39. I saw my 40th birthday coming, and I thought, “Oh my god, I have to do something. I want to be a rock star! But I can’t be a rock star.” So I wrote a show about being a rock star.

You grew up in an Orthodox family, in the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. Did you like singing back then?
I went to yeshiva, and I didn’t think of this consciously until recently, but there was this hippy-dippy music teacher who was so different from all the other teachers. Most teachers were male, rabbis. All the women teachers were very religious. They wore wigs, and were all covered up. But this woman was wearing jeans and madras shirts, and at least had the appearance of being braless—this was the early Seventies. She had us singing Joni Mitchell, The Band: I remember singing, “paved paradise, put up a parking lot.” I have very clear memories of singing these songs with all the yeshiva kids. I think she must’ve made a very strong impression on me.

What does Rita wear as a Jewish gospel singer?
She’s wearing sort of a choir robe. It’s blue and silver. What I had in my mind is what the Kohens, the high priests, wore, that was my original thinking, like a Kohen prayer apron. But when she turns around, on the back, there’s a hamsa with a Magen David on it in rhinestone, so it’s fabulous. I’m going to do a full turn-around at the end—very Neil Diamond in Coming to America, very Jazz Singer.

And here is Carroll delightfully lampooning the snobbery of girls working in a dress shop (courtesy of Cory Kahaney):

Jean Carroll, 98, Is Dead; Blended Wit and Beauty [NYT]

Related: Funny Girls [Tablet Magazine]

And, with that, our work is done. We hope you feel like you got some stuff off your chest, like we helped you atone. And, if not: sorry.

Tomorrow will be your last chance to atone on Tablet Magazine’s Sorry Hotline. Call the hotline at 718-360-4836, tell us what you’re sorry for, and we’ll publish all the remaining repentances tomorrow.

Is there something you’re truly sorry for? There’s still time to atone! Call Tablet Magazine’s Sorry Hotline at 718-360-4836, and get it off your chest.

We’d still like to hear from you, too. Call our Sorry Hotline at 718-360-4836, and tell us what you’re sorry for.

It’s not too late to get things off your chest. Call our Sorry Hotline at 718-360-4836, and tell us what you’re sorry for.

It’s not too late to add your own apology. Call our Sorry Hotline at 718-360-4836, and tell us what you’re sorry for.

Want to join the ranks of the atoners? It’s not too late. Call our Sorry Hotline at 718-360-4836, and tell us what you’re sorry for.

Have an apology of your own waiting to get out? It’s not too late to repent. Call Tablet Magazine’s Sorry Hotline at 718-360-4836, and tell us all about it.

To the southwest, in Toledo, less boastful are the town officials who allowed a new school to be built over a 13th-century Jewish cemetery, prompting international protest after excavators unearthed the remains of 103 bodies, in violation of Jewish law. According to the director of the regional government’s culture department, “Nobody knows the importance of Spain’s Jewish heritage better than we do in Toledo,” once the capital of Spanish Jewry. “But we can’t put 1,000 pupils on the street.” Yesterday, the conflict was resolved, not entirely to everyone’s satisfaction, when the bones were re-buried near their original resting place.

It may serve as some consolation to know that the Jewish cemetery atop Mont Juic was designated a cultural heritage site this past May. Those who lie there shall go undisturbed, except by the passing of 180 sweaty cyclists this Thursday.

Le Tour de France, official site
Re-Burying Jewish Souls [NYT]

Jaws is still scary, despite the poor shark effects. Even Spielberg thinks so. He told a reporter, “I haven’t shown Jaws to my 10 or 11-year-old, and I won’t. I showed Jaws to Sawyer when he was, I think, 13. Because then they use the argument, ‘Dad, I was bar mitzvahed last week. Everybody said today I’m a man, and you still won’t let me see Jaws?’ Sometimes the kids outsmart me.”

While Spielberg might be basking in this anniversary, however, The Wrap’s Richard Stellar is outraged at the mogul’s recent donation of a Torah to the nonreligious Motion Picture and Television Fund home for seniors, which, says Stellar, is currently getting well-deserved bad press for cutting down on care.

Today in History, June 30
Spielberg’s Torah [The Wrap]
Related: Spielberg Q&A [Vanity Fair]

David Sassoon has become a legend for dressing the rich, the aristocratic, the glamorous, and, especially, the royals. He’s just celebrated 50 years in the fashion business, and he’s now published a lavish book called The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon. It’s part autobiography and part gorgeous coffee-table spread, with pictures of the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Princess Diana modeling his exotic outfits.

Nextbook visited the designer in his London showroom and spoke with him about his Sephardic roots, his first visit to Buckingham Palace, and how Jewish weddings were ahead of the trends.

Film director Ed Zwick and New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier’s friendship spans three decades, and has been animated by passionate exchanges about their lives and their work. When Zwick was shooting his latest feature, Defiance, in the forests of Lithuania, Wieseltier came to visit. Wieseltier even landed a part in the film about the Bielski brothers, who organized a rescue effort of Jews during World War II, though ultimately his role got cut.

Nextbook invited Zwick and Wieseltier into a studio so we could eavesdrop on their continuing conversation about the making of the film, about the Bielskis post-war life in America, and about what a film celebrating resistance might or might not be saying about those who did not fight back.

Defiance opens nationwide today.

In April 1978, the miniseries Holocaust debuted on NBC. Starring Meryl Streep, James Woods, and Michael Moriarty, the program follows a fictional upper middle class German Jewish family as it is torn apart and ultimately destroyed. Some critics deplored it for its soap operatic veneer, but viewers were not deterred; 44 million of them watched the four-part program in the United States. Subsequently, it was broadcast throughout Europe and elsewhere.

German television eventually aired the program, but only when it was becoming something of an embarrassment that they hadn’t already done so. Expectations for its success were low, given Germans’ exhaustion with public discussions on the subject. But the miniseries proved to be wildly successful, and prompted a new kind of engagement with this dark chapter in German history.

Thirty years after Holocaust was shown in Germany, Eric Molinsky looks at its impact there.

Eric Molinsky visited Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken, a Hebrew Israelite synagogue in Chicago, to find out from congregants and clergy how they practice their faith, and what led them to it. Featured prominently in his report: Rabbi Capers Funnye, cousin to incoming first lady Michelle Obama.

Mural from the tomb of Khnumhotep II (c. 1890 BC) at Beni Hasan, Egypt, depicting a group of visiting nomadic traders from Syria-Palestine/Canaan. These travelers are widely believed to have been Hebrews. See a larger image.

A few weeks ago, finalists were announced for this year’s Man Booker Prize, which honors the best novel by a British Commonwealth or Irish writer. The thirteen authors on the longlist include Salman Rushdie, art critic John Berger, and Joseph O’Neil, whose novel Netherland has received a lot of attention in the United States. Also on the list is an author who is not as well known here, but who should be: Linda Grant.

Grant’s new novel, The Clothes on Their Backs, tells the story of Vivien, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants who hide their Jewishness—and other details of their past—from her and the rest of the world. As an adult, Vivien forges a friendship with an estranged, criminal uncle in order to gain access to the secrets her parents have kept from her.

The Guardian calls the book “fluid and addictive.” Our London-based reporter Hugh Levinson was equally enthralled. In an interview with Levinson from her home in north London, Grant talks about why suffering does not make one noble, keeping family secrets rarely works, and shopping is a worthy pastime.

Photos: Judah Passow.

Though she never really knew him, Israeli chanteuse Yasmin Levy is very much her father’s daughter. Composer, cantor, and singer Yitzhak Levy died when Yasmin was just one year old, but by that time he had collected and recorded thousands of traditional Sephardic songs that otherwise might have disappeared with the last generation of Ladino—or Judeo-Spanish—speakers.

Levy’s mother is also a singer, but it was not until her late teens that Levy herself began to follow in her parents’ footsteps. She has since received international acclaim for her fiery, Flamenco-infused interpretations of the songs her father so painstakingly preserved.

Hugh Levinson spoke to the thirty-two-year-old singer backstage at the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry, England, where she performed as part of the world tour for her new album, Mano Suave.

Ruth Behar’s family left Cuba when she was five years old, as part of the mass of migrants who fled shortly after Castro came to power in 1959. Behar grew up in Queens, New York, and the closest she ever got to the island were the trips her family took down to Miami Beach to visit her grandparents each summer. There, she would bask in the tropical climate and the vitality of the Jewish Cuban community.

Behar loved those visits, but as she got older, she found herself increasingly drawn to Cuba itself. Finally, in 1991, against the wishes of her parents, she went. And she kept going back; at this point, she estimates she’s traveled to Cuba about 40 times.

Out of those trips comes a new book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba. It is filled with the stories of people Behar has encountered in the course of her travels. Recently, while in Miami, she spoke with reporter Alicia Zuckerman about her attachment to the place and its centrality to her Jewish identity.

Mayer Kirshenblatt was an excitable kid. In the predominantly Jewish village of Apt in Poland where he was born in 1916, he was called Mayer tamez, or Mayer July, as July was the hottest month, the time of year that made everyone crazy. Other local characters included Zalman goy, who was as Jewish as the next Zalman; Yosele kliske (Yosl the Little Square Noodle) and Yankele kekl (Yankl the Little Penis).

Though he left Apt for Canada in 1934 Kirshenblatt is still able to summon those nicknames and much more in They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust. The book is equal parts ethnography, memoir, and—perhaps most remarkably—gallery, with hundreds of paintings Kirshenblatt has created in the past two decades capturing the sights and rhythms of the world he left behind.

For years, Kirshenblatt has shared stories about his childhood with his daughter, folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, but it was only in 1990, at the age of 73, that he began to paint those memories as well. Though he had no formal training as an artist, he quickly found a visual language that is at once vibrant, empathetic, and simple, and dense with material evidence of Jewish Polish life.

Kirshenblatt’s first-person narratives (as told to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett), which accompany the illustrations collected in They Called Me Mayer July, could easily stand alone. Together, they completely immerse you.

Take, for instance, a lovely purplish-grey painting titled The Pisher. In it, young Mayer stands in the center of a stark, night-darkened room, a kitchen stove in one corner and a narrow cot in the other, peeing into a basin on the floor. In the accompanying story, Kirshenblatt explains that though the family used an outhouse during the day—as did unwelcome intruders with regrettably poor aim—at night a basin was brought out and the house was bolted and locked—the windows fully boarded up—a practice left over “from the time of pogroms, when fear was a constant companion.”

They Called Me Mayer July is sweet, coarse, and at times devastating. We know a lot about what happened to Poland’s Jews after Kirshenblatt left, so much so that Jewish life in Poland sometimes seems to have lasted a single, nightmarish half-decade before it was utterly destroyed. Kirshenblatt didn’t witness those years, and while he doesn’t spare us the knowledge that many of the people he describes—including members of his own family—perished, he is more concerned with preserving his memories of Apt, where Jews had lived for hundreds of years, perhaps struggling but very much alive. The following pages show a sampling of his work, which can also be seen in a traveling exhibit, now at the Magnes Museum in Berkeley.

RINSING THE LAUNDRY

Mother did the heavy laundry—the bed sheets, pillowcases, and tablecloths—once a month. Without running water, this was a very big job. She would hire a woman to wash the heavy laundry in a big wooden tub in the kitchen. After the laundry was boiled and washed, it had to be rinsed. Water was at a premium because you had to pay a water-carrier for every bucket, so it was too expensive to bring the water to the laundry. Instead, the women took the laundry to the water. They put the soapy laundry into a sheet and took it down to the river, where they could rinse it in running water. They would swoosh the laundry in a shallow part of the stream, beat the laundry with a wood paddle on a nice flat rock, and rinse it again. After wringing out the laundry, they would bring it home and blue and starch it. Bluing makes white look whiter and prevents it from yellowing.

In nice weather, we hung the laundry to dry in the courtyard. Otherwise, we hung it in the attic next to Moyre Simkhe’s apartment. If you were unlucky, thieves would climb the ladder to the attic in the middle of the night and steal the laundry. To get your laundry back, you had to rush over to a particular man who would arrange a pay-off for the return of the stolen goods, You had to be fast, or the thieves would sell the goods to a receiver. Then it would be too late. A middleman knew where to find the thieves: they liked to hang out at the local bootlegger’s place, which was called a shvartse shenk in Yiddish. There were several such places in Apt. Bootlegging was an honorable profession; it was like running a private club in your own home. The thieves would gather around a table in the bootlegger’s bedroom to discuss the day’s business: loan sharking, whose home got broken into, and the like. They knew everything. The lady of the house would roast a goose or a couple of ducks. The aroma of garlic, onions and roasting fowl is still in my nostrils. It could cost as much as a laborer’s weekly pay to get the laundry back; a worker earned a zloty and a half a day. If you paid the money, the next morning you would find the laundry back in the attic. It would be in exactly the same order as the thieves had found it. This was a point of honor among the thieves.

YOM KIPPUR EVE

Two people sold lime in Apt. One was the woman whose husband was so devout that he whitewashed the decorated walls of Upper besmedresh so the men would not be distracted during prayer. The other was Yankl kvapus and his wife. That was not their real name. It was their nickname. They had no children. They sold lime, as well as starch and bluing for laundry, and herring. Don’t ask me why this combination; people would do anything to get by. Yankl’s wife was a big, tall woman. She wore many skirts, one on top of the other. What I remember best about her is the way she shook hands with everyone on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in front of the synagogue. This is a time of contrition. It was customary to apologize, ask forgiveness for any offenses committed during the previous twelve months, and shake hands. Crying, she would blow her nose in her hands before shaking hands.

BUTCHER CARRYING A CALF

As far as meat is concerned, it is written, “Do not remove the calf from its mother for seven days.” Every farmer had his favorite butcher. Periodically, the butcher would talk with the farmer when he came to town for the market, or the butcher himself or cattle dealers would go around the countryside to make arrangements for buying livestock. A farmer would have one or two cows. The butcher would inquire as to the welfare of the pregnant cow: “How is the cow doing? When is it expecting?” As soon as the cow dropped the calf, the farmer would notify the butcher, “Gimpl, the calf is here.” The farmer wanted to get rid of the calf as soon as possible in order to start milking the mother. The calf at seven days would not be too steady on its feet. It couldn’t walk very fast. Besides, if the calf had to walk three or four miles, it would lose weight. The solution was for the butcher to carry the calf, at least part of the way. Sometimes the farmer would fill the calf with water to make it weigh more. Out of fear, the calf would urinate and wet the butcher. Or, rather than carrying it, Gimpl would insert his finger into the calf’s mouth. Thinking his finger was a teat, the calf would follow Gimpl home.

After an animal had been butchered, it had to be sold quickly because there was no refrigeration. Even if a housewife were short of money, the butcher would give her credit so that he could get rid of the meat. Gimpl, however, could not read or write. To keep track of his transactions, he would mark the name and the sum on his boots with chalk, in his own signs, and he would know who owed him what. But on Friday, since he had to clean his boots before going to the synagogue, he would go around collecting his debts. Once they were settled, he could clean his boots and erase the whole bookkeeping. Like many other poor people, he cleaned his boots with truen to keep them black and supple. The fish oil prevented the leather from drying out.

BRINGING FOOD TO GRANDFATHER IN JAIL, ca. 1930

One is not supposed to handle money or do any kind of commerce on Sabbath, but my grandmother was always ready to turn a penny. On Saturday, when the young swains were out of pumpkin seeds, they went to my grandmother’s. The bags were on the table. My grandmother would pick up the corner of the tablecloth, and the gentlemen would drop the coins under the cloth and then help themselves to a bag. The transaction was completed without my grandmother ever touching the money or handing out the merchandise. I would say that was pretty clever. As soon as the Sabbath was over and the lights came on, Grandmother could open the store again. She took in a few cents. A big housekeeper she was not.

On Sundays, when it was illegal to do business, my grandmother would sit outside her shop with the door ajar. If someone wanted something, my grandfather, who stayed inside, would slip the merchandise through the partly open door, and my grandmother would take the money. She had deep pockets. They wouldn’t make very much on a Sunday, but whatever they made was more than if the shop was closed. Every once in a while, one of the only two policemen in town got ambitious and cracked down. The policemen were always in full dress: a dark blue tunic, buttoned to the chin, rifles with fixed bayonets. The only difference between summer and winter was that in winter they also wore a greatcoat. They did very little patrolling in the town. They mostly patrolled the periphery and on occasion patrolled the Jewish Street to look for stores that were open on Sundays. If my grandmother got caught, she had to pay a fine or serve time. My grandfather would be hauled in front of the civil court to represent her. Usually, she would be fined about ten zlotys. That was more than a week’s salary for a worker. Not wanting to pay the fine, my grandmother would be sentenced to a few days in jail, and my grandfather would serve the time for her. The authorities didn’t care who served the time.

The jail was a two-room affair, one room for women and one for men. The cell was about twelve feet by twelve feet, with a small window close to the ceiling, so that nobody could look in or out. There was no furniture, just a little straw scattered on the floor along the perimeter of the cell. There was an outhouse in a little courtyard.

Grandfather had company in his cell, his contemporaries. Usually there were five or six men there, also pious Jews. Some prayed. Most played cards all day. I don’t know whether the turnkey served them food. Even if he did, Jews would not eat it because it was not kosher. Since I was the oldest grandson, my mother delegated me to take food to my grandfather. I was told that the brushmaker, Yekhiel Watman, looked forward to jail because he could stretch out and go to sleep. At home, he and his family lived and worked in one tiny room.

BOY IN THE WHITE PAJAMAS

I remember even before my father left for Canada [in 1928] seeing how the cobblers lived. In my painting, you can see all the action. The drinking water was in a barrel on the floor. The wooden bucket on the cabinet contained water for soaking the leather to make it flexible. You can see all the tools and each step in the process of making a shoe. There is one cobbler I will never forget, our neighber der shvartser Khiel, Khiel the Brunet, and I’ve painted him. As I mentioned earlier, although he was redhead and all his children were redheads, they called him Khiel the Brunet. To confuse matters further, they nicknamed a brunet Khiel in town der geyler Khiel, Khiel the Redhead. One day my mother sent me to der shvartser Khiel in the early morning on an errand. It was before they had a chance to rise. When I walked into that room, there were people sleeping everywhere, wall-to-wall, at the head and foot of the beds, on benches and tables, and on the floor. The whole family lived and worked in two rooms.

Der shvartser Khiel was so poor he could not pay his income tax (dochodowy in Polish). When he knew the tax collector was about to arrive, he would hide anything of value. The tax collector, seeing that der shvartser Khiel couldn’t come up with the money, would take his tools and anything else he could find, put them out onto the street, and auction them off right in front of the cobbler’s workshop. Meanwhile, der shvartser Khiel had arranged for a neighbor to place a low bid: “Moyshe, you bid. I’ll pay you back.” It was a put-up deal. Everyone knew, so no one else would bid. The tax collector settled for the pittance he got from the auction and wrote off the rest. After the tax collector was gone, der shvartser Khiel repaid his neighbor, which was considerably less than he would have paid in taxes, and got all his tools back. The poverty was unbelievable.

Der shvartser Khiel had seven daughters. Every time a male child was born, something happened and the child died. Every Jew wants to have a son so that there will be someone to say kaddish, the prayer for the deceased, for him after his demise. In desperation, der shvartser Khiel went to the rabbi and implored him: “Am I to die without a male heir? Who will say the kaddish after I’m gone? I have seven daughters. Can I afford another one? Where will I find dowries and grooms for them all?” The rabbi thought for a while, then came up with a solution. He said, “Go home. When your wife gets pregnant and it’s a baby boy, do exactly what I tell you.” First, he gave Khiel an amulet and told him to make the boy wear it all the time: it would ward off evil spirits. Second, the child must always be dressed in white: the white clothes would fool the Angel of Death, the malekh-hamuves, into thinking the boy was already dead and not taking him, since Jews always bury their dead in white burial shrouds. A boy was born. Der shvartser Khiel followed the Rabbi’s instructions, and the boy survived. When I left Opatow in 1934, the boy was eight years old. I was told that even as a teenager he still wore the white pajamas. He was dressed in white in 1942 when the Jews of Apt were expelled, never to return.

It can’t be easy to take on the role of Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevye, with the ghosts of Zero Mostel and Chaim Topol hovering over you. When Alfred Molina had a go at it, in the 2004 Broadway revival, his toned-down approach was met with disappointment on the part of many theater-goers. But British actor Henry Goodman seems unfazed. Growing up on London’s East End, he says, he knew men like Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye—hardworking street vendors, stubborn and authoritarian, but ready to sacrifice their evenings to teach boxing or leather work at the local youth club, animated by “that sense of giving back.”

Goodman is now channeling those men night after night, in the West End production of Fiddler on the Roof at London’s Savoy Theatre. This is not Goodman’s first time playing a Jewish patriarch; in 2000 he received the Society of London Theatre’s Olivier Award for his portrayal of Shylock in Trevor Nunn’s The Merchant of Venice. But as he tells Nextbook, this role hits closer to home.

Photos: Catherine Ashmore.

Over the course of his 60-year career, Norman Mailer has tackled some pretty controversial subjects—the life of Jesus Christ, the inner workings of the CIA, the final days of murderer Gary Gilmore—as part of an ongoing effort to understand the nature of good and evil. In his latest novel, The Castle in the Forest, he imagines the early life of the 20th century’s foremost representative of evil, Adolf Hitler, as narrated by one of Satan’s minions.

At 84, Mailer is as passionate and contrary as ever. He speaks with Nextbook about his interest in Hitler—which dates back to 1932, when he was but 9 years old—and about the drawbacks of our post-Enlightenment world view, which precludes a belief in the devil. He also traces his lineage as a writer and thinker, with nods to his butcher-scholar grandfather and E. M. Forster, among others. [Editor's note: The introduction to this podcast was updated to acknowledge Mailer's death in November, 2007.]{Edit

Daniel Estrin discovered this recently at the Machane Yehude market in Jerusalem. There, the etrog craze is fueled by Uzi Eli, a purveyor of etrog-based creams, sprays, and potions that promise to bring just about every imaginable benefit—from the clearing of scratchy throats to the lifting of saggy breasts. Here’s an audio postcard from Eli’s busy market stall, two days before Sukkot began.

Left: Uzi Eli’s stall. Right: Uzi Eli and worker Shachar.

Photos: Daniel Estrin.

Over the past year, while Nextbook columnist Jesse Green has been documenting the preparations leading up to his son Erez’s bar mitzvah, radio producer Emily Botein has been documenting Jesse. If you’ve followed along, you’ve heard Jesse guide Erez in learning his Torah portion (with the help of Trope Trainer software), negotiate with his partner Andy over luncheon fare, and bond with Abdul the suit salesman on the merits of dark tones over bright for an austere occasion such as this one.

Here’s the final act: the big day itself.

The shop, as it happened, was not exactly a shop, but the work of Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz, who took the name “Davisons and Co.” from his grandfather, Nissim Isaac David, who once ran an import-export business in Baghdad. As to why Rakowitz is importing Iraqi dates? Amanda Aronczyk tells the story.

Michael Rakowitz at his store on Atlantic Avenue

Growing up in the Bosnian village of Vlasenica, Flory Jagoda spent her afternoons and evenings singing with her family—everyone sang, her grandmother, her aunts, uncles and cousins. Though they’d lived in the Balkans for centuries, their songs were in Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino, passed down from the time of her ancestors’ expulsion from Spain.

World War II nearly obliterated the Sephardic community of Sarajevo and its surroundings. At 82, Flory Jagoda is one of the few people who remembers the musical traditions of that community. As the matriarch of a large clan—and as a teacher, composer, and performer—she is passing that tradition on. For her efforts, in 2002 she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. These are her songs and stories, as told to us from her home in Virginia.

Flory Jagoda’s songs have been collected on four CDs, available here.

Photo courtesy of Altaras Recordings.

“My dear little Ingeborg, you won’t have forgotten me and your visit to Bologna in spite of the beauties of Venice.” So begins the collection of letters that Reinhard Kaiser bid on at a Frankfurt stamp auction in 1991. The story they told would consume him for nearly a decade.

Written by Rudolf Kaufmann, a German geologist, and addressed to Ingeborg Magnusson, a young Swedish woman, they tell of a love thwarted by history. Rudolf was Jewish. Ingeborg was not. Alternately playful, mundane, romantic, and grave, the letters cover a four-year span, ending abruptly in 1939. Who were these people and what happened to them? Kaiser, a writer and translator, wanted to find out.

His curiosity led him to German villages, university archives, and ultimately to a Stockholm apartment building. In his 1996 book, Paper Kisses, newly translated into English, Kaiser reconstructs their romance, through the letters, photographs, and other documents.

Excerpts from the letters are read by Pejk Malinovski.

Image from Paper Kisses, Other Press, 2006.

In 1998, Lauren Sandler began work on a series on youth and religion for NPR. Her research took her to a small church in Seattle that attracted skateboarders, punks and hipsters decked out in vintage fashion – all of whom were exceptionally well-versed in the bible.

Nearly a decade later, Sandler is still tracking an Evangelical Christian youth movement that is fast-growing and nationwide. She talks to us about the people she’s met on her journey, and about the implications of their lifestyle and faith for a progressive, secular Jew like her. Her stories are collected in the book Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement.

Poet, critic and English professor Wayne Koestenbaum has a penchant for provocative book titles, from The Queen’s Throat, his study of opera and homosexuality, to Cleavage, a pop culture exegesis.

The title of his newest poetry collection, Best-selling Jewish Porn Films, gets points for shock value. But does it also signal a new interest in things Jewish?

Koestenbaum discusses the grappa-like pleasure of listening to German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, his immigrant father, and what he’s after with his latest collection.

From Best-selling Jewish Porn Films

Two Little Elegies for Joe Brainard

1.

I sit awake all night

watching a ladybug

cross the windowpane.

The tower of Babel

at my fingertips

bewitches her.

I’ve wasted my forties—

today’s the second

morning of my fortieth year.

Oh, but I must mention

one rare red record,

found at a flea market:

“The Rosary,” sung

by Vivian Delia Chiesa.

It holds up.

2.

At the great soprano’s husband’s funeral

the synagogue smells of talc and hair oil.

I wear a tie with chromosomal squiggles

and read “Kubla Khan” while waiting for the service

to begin. My grail is intersection,

though I can’t hold it,

don’t know what it is—

mysterious sadness falling into neat piles.

L. Bloom was born in Sung-Nam, Korea. Adopted as an infant, like her brother, she grew up in a town an hour west of Boston. She’s got relatives in Brookline and Jerusalem, and close friends who are Korean- and Chinese-American. L. is Jewish and Asian, and at 24, she’s still figuring out where she belongs.

Listen to interviews with families who adopted girls from China.

When sociologist Hella Winston began to study the Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn, her focus was on the spiritual life of women in a community known for its insularity, even compared to other Hasidic groups. Then a few of the women she was following confessed to a profound unhappiness with their restrictive lives. They longed for some kind of escape; some secretly watched videos or went on the internet.

These conversations led Winston to other women and men in several Hasidic communities who were also struggling with the strictures of Orthodoxy, or who had abandoned it altogether. These people would become the subject of Winston’s book, Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels.

Some observant bloggers have criticized Winston’s book, fueling a lively debate. And one of Winston’s subjects founded Footsteps, an organization that helps people who are considering leaving the Hasidic world.

As many parents will tell you, there’s nothing quite like your own children to force you to reexamine your beliefs. Before having a son, “I never bumped up against my own thoughts about spirituality,” says Michael Kimmel. “I think many of us don’t, and I think we sort of drift.”

Kimmel, a sociologist, and his wife, writer Amy Aronson, were forced out of their drift about two years ago when their son, Zachary, took a sudden, rather pronounced interest in religion. Julie Subrin reports.

Has anything like this every happened in your family? Has a relative or friend ever forced you to rethink what it means to be Jewish? Tell us your story.