Click here to see today’s countdown, starting with No. 5.

From amorous intellectuals to displaced aliens, the tail end of our list aims to capture the complexities and richness of Jewish contributions to filmmaking. Here are our top five films.

Click here to start the final part of Tablet Magazine’s list of 100 greatest Jewish films.

Click here to see today’s countdown, starting with No. 25.

Like any other discussion about the essence of Judaism, trying to settle on the 100 greatest Jewish films of all time is often an exercise in frustration, with more questions than clear criteria and much room for debate. Click here for the full list, which now includes numerous cases of non-Jews passing as Jews, Jews passing as something else, Nazis who sing, and Indians who speak Yiddish. It’s an eclectic lot, which is precisely the point of the list.

Click here to start part four of Tablet Magazine’s list of 100 greatest Jewish films.

Click here to see today’s countdown, starting with No. 50.

Jewish directors, producers, actors, writers, and designers have contributed to shaping the film medium. From Hollywood to Odessa, these creative talents told stories that had universal appeal but also, often, a uniquely Jewish soul. Today’s installment of our list of the 100 greatest Jewish films of all time begins and ends with ships: One brings illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine, the other carries sailors in revolt against the Czar’s oppressive troops, and between them lie entire worlds of storytelling. Here are numbers 50 to 26.

Click here to start part three of Tablet Magazine’s list of 100 greatest Jewish films.

Click here to see today’s countdown, starting with No. 75.

How do you decide which are the best 100 Jewish movies of all time? Does the subject matter count for much? The director? The stars? Or is there some other, fleeting essence that makes one film feel particularly Jewish? These are the questions at the heart of this list.

Today’s installment offers a wide range of interpretations, from two intellectuals engaged in endless conversation over dinner to three aging rockers trying their best to find the door to the stage and the key to success. Here are numbers 75 to 51.

Click here to start part two of Tablet Magazine’s list of 100 greatest Jewish films.

Click here to see the first installment of the list, starting with No. 100.

So, what is a Jewish film?

There’s no scientific algorithm by which to arrive at this answer, and we did not pretend to invent one. Instead, we—the Tablet Magazine staff, along with our pal and contributing editor Jody Rosen—brought to the table our individual notions of Jewishness (and film-ishness). Some choices were based on the identity of their creators, others for their themes, quite a few for their sheer influence on pop culture, and others because of some elusive sensibility that is impossible to define and yet feels instantly familiar. Our answers cut across genre lines: Some stories of robots or ghosts or spies had as much of a Jewish heart as movies focused on more solemn, obvious subject matters. Also, while many of our selections come from Hollywood, others don’t. From neo-realist Italy to postmodern Israel, we did our best to look at filmmaking across nations and across time.

Today we reveal the bottom 25 on our list, Nos. 100 to 76. Over the next four days, we’ll present the rest, and we hope that you’ll share yours, as well. We hope you’ll be delighted, and we trust you’ll be infuriated. This swirl of conflicting emotions is what we have in mind; it’s what makes movies great and, as we found, often what makes them Jewish.

Today’s installment spans from helpless Jews and their Christ-like gentile saviors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw to a magical land somewhere over the rainbow, and includes a classic of Israeli cinema as well as a classic of 1980s New Jersey glam. Here, then, are numbers 100 to 76.

Click here to start Tablet Magazine’s list of 100 greatest Jewish films.

Produced by David McGuire and Ari Daniel Shapiro. Photography by Magda Braniewska.

PRODUCED BY ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO. PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMANDA KOWALSKI

Joanna Neborsky

We scoured Tablet Magazine’s and Nextbook.org’s archives to find books (and their writers) long forgotten. Each week we will feature one lost book and the story behind it. So blow the dust off the cover, and begin!

Hurst and Hurston: Seventy years after their road trip, the best-selling sentimental novelist has run out of gas, while Zora is still in the driver’s seat. By Kate Bolick

No Exit: Raised in the last golden days of the Hapsburgs, the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig found his world shattered by war. By Jennifer Weisberg

Restoration Project: Where have all Bernard Malamud’s readers gone? By Rachel Donadio

Back from the Shadows: Dovid Bergelson’s skepticism served him poorly in life but sublimely in art. By Boris Fishman

Third Look: On rereading Leonard Michaels’s I Would Have Saved Them If I Could. By Shalom Auslander

The Odd-Bod: In literary London, Elias Canetti was everybody’s favorite refugee. By Jonathan Wilson

School Ties: Jacques de Lacretelle won praise when he wrote in Dreyfus’ shadow, but today his portrait of a prep-school peer looks grotesque. By Paul LaFarge

Glamour and Peril: Tempestuous, cold, and intensely private, Elsa Morante considered herself a genius. Are others finally starting to agree? By Andrea Crawford

Melting Point: British playwright Israel Zangwill coined America’s most enduring metaphor as his reputation dissolved in controversy. By Chloe Veltman

Give ‘Em Hecht: A young Chicago newspaperman thought he was perfect for the part of his hero. By Neal Pollack

The Spy Who Loved Me: An Israeli thriller that captivated Graham Greene. By Paul LaFarge

King of the Forest: The Viennese pornographer turned critic who dreamed up Bambi. By David Rakoff

Funny Guys Finish Last: Philip Roth and Bruce Jay Friedman were rising stars in the 1960s. Roth became part of the canon. Friedman became “that guy who wrote Splash.” By Meg Wolitzer

Westward Expansion: Prostitutes, Christian Scientists, cross-dressing teachers. By Margy Rochlin

A Fine Mess: How a filmmaker turned his movie flop into a groundbreaking book. By Lawrence Levi

Asch’s Passion: A popular Yiddish novelist strove for immortality by taking on Jesus, but it cost him his core audience and made him a marked man. By Ellen Umansky

So Big: Human awkwardness was at the heart of Edna Ferber’s popular novels, but she shied away from writing about the outsiders she knew best. By Mollie Wilson

Fall From Grace: In 1843, British novelist Grace Aguilar was a household name on both sides of the Atlantic. So how come we’ve never heard of her? By Justin Taylor

A Woman Out of Time: In 1938, at the height of U.S. isolationism, Americans devoured Phyllis Bottome’s chronicle of a German-Jewish family’s struggle to survive under the Nazi regime. By Andrea Crawford

Regatta Land: Amid Harvard’s ivy-covered bricks, the hero of Myron Kaufmann’s Remember Me to God struggles to become part of the in crowd. By Josh Lambert

Great Pretenders: In Romain Gary’s family, invention was the necessity of mother and son. By Emma Garman

Wartime Truths: In 1945, Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel of the Warsaw ghetto enraged Poles and Jews alike. How will it read to audiences today? By Andrea Crawford

Dizzy with Life: Clarice Lispector’s gorgeous, vibrant writings made one writer’s head—and heart—spin. By Anderson Tepper

Storm Warning: The surprising alliance at the heart of John Oliver Killens. By Josh Lambert

In Bloom: Pearl Buck breathes life into a disappearing Chinese community. By Jennifer Cody Epstein

Toward the Abyss: The final work of a doomed Yiddish novelist. By Elizabeth Mitchell

The Student Who Wouldn’t Go Away: How a bumbling immigrant from Kiev became a literary sensation. By Jennifer Weisberg

What Happened to Mary Berg? A young girl’s account of the Warsaw Ghetto was a big success. Then the diary—and its author—disappeared. By Amy Rosenberg

The Good of ‘A Bad Man:’ How Stanley Elkin hit his stride. By Sarah Almond

The Hermit of Oliphant: After the literary pioneer Dvora Baron immigrated to Palestine, she never again ventured out. By Haim Watzman

The Road Not Taken: Decades before Herzl, Benjamin Disraeli wrote a novel that grappled with Zionism. By Adam Kirsch

Third Life: For Jakov Lind, reinvention was the heart of fiction. By Sasha Weiss

The Paragraph That Changed My Life: On Yaakov Shabtai’s Past Continuous. By Todd Hask-Lowy

Baruch Obama: How a black president was imagined as a Jewish one, more or less. By Ben Greenman

Comeback Kid: Having failed to assimilate, Ludwig Lewisohn went on to write the great American Jewish novel. By Josh Lambert

Beginning of the End: Decadence and anti-Semitism in Arthur Schnitzler’s Vienna. By Wesley Yang

Touchy Subject: Frederick Busch feared his novel Invisible Mending would upset readers. He didn’t anticipate his own discomfort. By Andrea Crawford

Child’s Play: Seventy years ago, a contentious novel scrutinized Judaism through the eyes of a young boy. By Sasha Weiss

Where the Heart Is: A 1951 novel parses the meaning of home. By Elizabeth Gumport

Swallowed Whole: Réjean Ducharme’s mysterious 1966 novel. By Benjamin Nugent

Big Bang: With Lionel Trilling and Robert Giroux cheerleading, Sam Astrachan had a stellar future. Then the glimmer faded. By Josh Lambert

A Wanderer in the Desert: How a tubercular shoemaker became a great Yiddish poet. By Jacqueline Osherow

Of a Feather: Communing with Bernard Malamud’s Jewbird. By Joe Hill

Let’s first talk about the genre of the fotonovela. Does it always have the documentary character of Once@9:53am? Is it always grounded in real events?

Not at all. The fotonovela in the Spanish-speaking world is an escapist artifact. It delves into lurid themes and melodrama, much like your average telenovela. Its hallmarks are desire and sexual innuendo, class differences, violence physical and psychological. The attempt in Once@9:53am is to rescue the genre from the dogs, to make it historically conscious, and, also, to turn it into agitprop. The theme, as you know, is the terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The narrative revolves around a freelance journalist assigned by Playboy magazine to do a photo-essay on El Once, the neighborhood in the Argentine capital where Jews and other immigrants first settled—a kind of Lower East Side. As it turns out, something more than the usual rhythms of life play out that morning and the camera is there to serve as witness.

Your role in the fotonovela is not just as creator but as the character Rabbi Stavchansky. Your father is an actor. Was putting on a fake beard and using the unshortened form of your last name a way of getting in tune with the “family business”—or maybe a way of experiencing a rabbinical “road not taken”?

You put it better than I ever could. I’m not only a crypto-actor, I’m also a lapsed rabbi, or maybe an anti-rabbi. By the way, my father acted in several fotonovelas. The idea for this one took root after I stumbled over a copy in my family home in Mexico City.

The fotonovela pretty much ends with the explosion, but what can you say about its aftermath? Was it, for Buenos Aires’ Jews, what 9/11 was for New York? Come to think of it, did 9/11 alter or recast the way in which the citizens of El Once regarded their attack?

The aftermath of the AMIA attack is a long and twisted one. Iran seems to have been behind it. Argentina’s then president, Carlos Saúl Menem, who is of Lebanese descent, built an elaborate cover-up. The incident at the heart of Once@9:53am was indeed analogous to 9/11. It was perceived not only as an assault on El Once but on Argentina in general. It was a strike against the very concept of what it means to be a citizen of modern Latin America. On that morning, the region was touched by the Middle East as never before; the entire Spanish-speaking world was made aware of its vulnerabilities. Today the AMIA building has tight security. There are concrete barriers on the street. No photographs of it are allowed. That, in and of itself, is a metaphor for Jewish identity in Latin America today.

To download an excerpt from Once@9:53am, click on the picture below.

Pilgrimage:

Gawad Teriamou:

Read Fishbane’s two-part report on the Abayudaya here.

‘The Roulette Wheel’
Paul Berman is the author of The Flight of the Intellectuals:

The cries in the street appear right now to be uniformly denouncing corruption and autocracy—a fact that means nothing at all, given that every revolution in the history of the world has been conducted in the name of hatred for corruption and autocracy. Still, no one is shouting, “Islam is the solution!” Nor is anyone calling, so far, for some other imaginative kind of regime different from a conventional democracy. Nor do the principal crowds in the street appear to be the manipulated dupes of a hidden revolutionary organization. The many thrilling cries for democracy and freedom that we hear seem to be, on the contrary, genuinely spontaneous and mass. A conclusion, therefore: We are witnessing an enormous event whose most obvious surface element right now is a resemblance to 1989.

Some other surface elements are less reassuring. The liberal factions and parties and intellectuals of the region appear to be standing on institutionally flimsy foundations. Worse, their liberalism itself appears sometimes to be shaky. And there is the big problem beneath the surface. The Muslim Brotherhood, in its various branches and offshoots, appears to be magnificently disciplined, well-organized, sure of itself, and ideologically sturdy. The Brotherhood, in circumstances like these, merely needs to act with caution and an eye on the ultimate goal, and then it will stand in an excellent position to inherit the various revolutions as time goes by—to inherit the revolutions either in full or, more likely, in some kind of power-sharing arrangement with national armies and other groups.

As for the Brotherhood’s ultimate goal, this, of course, is 1979 exactly—an Islamist dictatorship (which will call itself a “democracy”), naturally with adaptations suited to different countries and circumstances, and whose goal will be regional (and more than regional), not just local. You have only to cock a keen ear to the Brotherhood’s oratory to recognize that, ideologically speaking, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved not one whit.

This exhilarating moment of ours is therefore also a terrifying moment. And it would be foolish to hazard even the slightest prediction—foolish even to toy with a phrase like “more likely,” though I have just toyed with the phrase. The history of every revolution that has ever taken place tells us that at moments like this the role of hitherto-unknown leaders and of unforeseeable events is going to be vast and that leaders and events will point in every possible direction. Some countries will fare rather well, others will plunge into catastrophe—and the roulette wheel is spinning at this very moment.

‘Populism’
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush Administration:

The 1989 revolutions benefited from several positive factors, such as prior years of democracy (Czechoslovakia and the Baltic states are a good example) and the model of the European Union. In the Middle East history is not so kind, nor does the Arab League offer much to admire. So, one can be at least dubious about whether vibrant democracies are assured in every case. I worry about a kind of populism developing, as the demands of the people for economic improvement will likely outstretch what new governments can deliver (except perhaps in Libya, with its oil wealth and small population). It would not be surprising to see politicians doing what came so easily in Latin America, appealing to lowest common denominators, inveighing against the rich, and pursuing policies guaranteed to produce more poverty.

Still, there are reasons for optimism. There are models of Muslim democracies in Asia. No one in the Arab world admires the Persian model of velayat-i-faqih, or clerical rule, nor do they admire the dictatorship that has been established in Iran today. In the years since 1989, there is an even stronger global consensus around democracy and human rights. While the Chinese model may be invoked, it seems entirely irrelevant in the Arab cases. One ingredient that must not be left out is the United States, for our voice is still heard in the region, and we can push and pull to get better outcomes than might otherwise occur. Here I am not so optimistic, however: The Barack Obama Administration does not seem ready, willing, or able to do that kind of pushing and pulling successfully.

‘Egypt’s Path’
Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, served in the CIA for 30 years. He is the author of Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad:

An earthquake has shaken Arab politics this winter like never before. Dictators are toppling in the face of home-grown revolutions. The winter of Arab discontent may give rise to a spring of democracy or a reversion to new autocracies. Some fear a repeat of the 1979 Iranian revolution, but there are fundamental differences between Iran then and the Arab revolutions now, especially the most important one in Egypt. Egypt is the centerpiece of the Arab world in terms of demography, culture, and history. The jasmine revolution in Tunis inspired Egyptians; Egyptians are inspiring the rest of the region.

The Iranian revolution was dominated from the start by Ayatollah Khomeni and a coterie of like-minded mullahs, especially Ayatollah Beheshti. They controlled the message and the marches. Secular, liberal, and leftist voices tried to gain traction but were always secondary players to Khomeni, who also had a revolutionary idea, the concept of a Shia supreme leader for a new Iran, that left no space for dissent. In the CIA’s task force monitoring the revolution we concluded in the fall of 1978 that Khomeni was the revolution. His triumphal return from Paris in early 1979 set the stage for the coup de grace and the collapse of the army.

No such charismatic figure has emerged in Egypt. So far the revolution has not had a single leader or dominant party. The Sunni clerical establishment in Egypt has not sought such a role, nor has the Muslim Brotherhood to date sought to monopolize the process of change. This could of course change. Revolutions tend to produce Bonapartes, leaders who grab the mantle of power and take charge. But so far that is not the case in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, or Libya. In Egypt the process of change has now been channeled into a dialogue between the broad-based opposition and the army.

The Egyptian army is another big difference. In Iran the military collapsed as did SAVAK, the secret police. In Egypt the army is still a power broker and widely respected. It will have a cautionary voice in determining Egypt’s future.

Egypt and the other Arab revolutions need not be a repeat of 1979, nor are they likely to look like Eastern Europe in 1989. They will each forge their own unique new political orders. As it has for centuries, Egypt’s path will be the one that sets the standard.

‘Foreign Policy Models’
Andrew J. Tabler is a Next Generation fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute:

Recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are closer to the spirit of 1989 than to the Iranian revolution in 1979. Protesters have poured into the streets because of the way they were governed, not because of their countries’ foreign policies. As globalization and the Internet have penetrated Arab countries dominated by authoritarian regimes, this has opened up new spaces where people can talk about their aspirations and organize to achieve them. It has also undermined the fear-factor deterrent that regimes use to keep people down.

To help ensure that the uprisings of 2011 do not turn out like 1979, where one authoritarian regime is replaced by another, the United States needs to work with our allies on the ground to help these countries build more liberal systems that respect human rights, rule of law, and ensure that one party or group cannot dominate the political system. This will be hard work, and it will be difficult for the United States to affect specific outcomes that serve our interests. But we don’t have a choice—the old “realist” or “stability” foreign policy models built during the Cold War, when we separated our relations with countries from their domestic politics, is no longer sufficient. On a country-specific basis, we need to bring human rights, rule of law, and democracy issues into the mix if we truly want to bring stability to our allies in the region. A greater emphasis on these issues could, if directed properly, undermine U.S. adversaries throughout the region.

A particular challenge will be Washington’s approach to Syria, which the United States is currently trying to bring to the negotiating table with Israel. To facilitate those talks, Washington has kept human rights pretty low on the list of issues with Damascus. Recently, the regime sentenced a blogger to five years in prison for allegedly working with the CIA—a charge the U.S. government vehemently denies. The best way to show Damascus that human rights matters to Washington is to move it up the list of issues and explain that the United States has every interest in facilitating peace between Israel and Syria, not just Israel and the Assad regime.

‘Too Soon to Tell’
Brian Katulis is a senior fellow for national security at the Center for American Progress:

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future,” said Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was part of the Manhattan Project. Popular-uprising shock waves emanating from the pent-up frustrations about a broken political and economic order continue to reverberate throughout the Middle East, and it is far too early to predict how events will evolve in any particular country, let alone come up with a reasonable forecast for what the region might look like in a few years.

The Middle East is at the start of what is likely to be a long and probably messy period of transition—and it could take the rest of this decade before any clarity truly emerges. As fast-moving as the day-to-day events are, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that some fundamentals remain the same in most countries in the region—the military regime that ruled Egypt since 1952 still rules today, and the region’s problems of widespread poverty, cronyism, and corruption will likely remain for years to come, even if serious democratic political reform moves forward in some countries. At this early stage, the question of whether serious political reform toward democracy is in the cards remains quite uncertain, even in places like Egypt and Tunisia, where leaders were ousted.

In 2004, I argued that the power elites in Middle East countries included economic elites who benefited from a corrupt and opaque status quo that authoritarian governments helped preserve using their internal security services. Slicing through the old order that has controlled the security, politics, and economies of these countries and restructuring the distribution of power will take more than street protests—and the process will take a long time.

What the uprisings have done thus far is remind regular people in the region that their actions can lead to some change. I have argued that in the global arena these days, power (defined as the ability to get things done and achieve certain goals by applying resources) is more “open source” than in the past—there are fewer barriers to entry, and elite institutions have less of an ability to maintain their monopoly.

That’s the case in the Middle East now—and what we’re seeing under way is the beginning of a protracted negotiation over how power is distributed within these societies. Some of these negotiations will take place peacefully in debates over constitutional reforms, as we see in Egypt; some of these power negotiations will devolve into vicious and deadly battles in the streets, as we see in Libya.

And while it’s tempting for any Middle East observer to apply to the region the frameworks for analysis that dominate the policy discussions in America—whether about the uprisings’ impact on Islamism, Iran’s role in the region, or peace with Israel—the more realistic yet unsatisfying answer is that it is too soon to tell. Many countries in the Middle East are going to see their focus turn sharply inward as they deal with the crushing demographic, economic, and social problems that sparked most of these protests. How this leads to a reordering within each country or more broadly in the region it is far too soon to tell.

The Selected Poems of Yehuda Halevi is available from Nextbook Press here.

PRODUCED BY ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO. PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMANDA KOWALSKI.

Crispy Christmas, How one woman spends her holidays, by Vanessa Davis

Unholy Ghost, How I found myself onstage singing in A Christmas Carol, by Rachel Sugar

Jewish Christmas, Why Jews eat Chinese on December 25, and how a hip Brooklyn deli is modernizing that tradition, by Marc Tracy

‘Blade II’ and Fried Rice, Christmas Eve for those who have nowhere else to be, by Janice Erlbaum

Arts and Culture
My Yiddishe Santa, Cartoonist Milt Gross’s 1927 visit from a Yiddish-accented St. Nicholas, by Marissa Brostoff

Have Yourself a Jewish Little Christmas, The top 10 Christmas Songs written by Jews, by Marc Tracy

The Grinch and I, My unnerving identification with the cuddly curmudgeon, by Jerome E. Copulsky

You described your 2007 novel Kalooki Nights as “the most Jewish novel that has ever been written by anybody anywhere” and we agree—

It certainly uses the word “Jew” more than any other novel.

So what do you mean by that?

I suppose I meant that its preoccupations are unrelievedly Jew talking to Jew thinking about Jew. This was deliberate. That’s what I wanted to write. Jew, Jew, Jew, joke, joke, joke, the world as seen entirely through the eyes of Jews for Jews. There are some Jews who live like that. To a degree, there’s a possibility in every Jew I ever met, for them to live like that. That you ask the question “Why?” and then back you go to the Holocaust and back to the pogroms before that, and everyone wants to know what it is that’s made this particular kind of Jewish morbidity into a positive feature now of the Jewish imagination. So, the book was really about that. Jews thinking about Jews talking about Jews to Jews written by somebody who is a Jew, who is obsessed by the subject, has some crazy obsession, who wants to get to the bottom of this obsession and wonders where this obsession comes from. And will deploy every kind of act of the mind to think about it, including, primarily, what Jews do best, which is make jokes. No one makes jokes like Jews.

So, it’s not only the most Jewish book ever written, it’s got more Jewish jokes in it, good or bad, than any book ever written. Certainly more about Jews and more jokes in it than the Old Testament.

That leads us directly to Shylock. What do you make of him?

I don’t have as many problems as others do. Shakespeare does no wrong for me. I think he’s thinking about what it’s like to bear that stereotype. To have to wear that stereotype as a badge and how hellish that is. That doesn’t stop him thinking that in the end Shylock is Shylock and doing Jewish things. Shakespeare is about as humane about it as you could expect for that time and given his knowledge.

You are most often described as an English Jewish novelist, but you might feel you have more in common with post-colonial literature, Indian writers, Irish, or others. Or do you see yourself and other Jewish writers in Britain doing something more like a regionalism, something more like Scotsmen, or cockneys, or people from Wales?

Funny, I don’t think of myself like that. I’m an “Eng Lit” man. I gave up my table tennis, and I went to Cambridge, although I played a bit there, and I studied English literature, and I went to Australia and I went back to Cambridge, and I taught here for 20-odd years English literature. I’m an absolutely English Literature Man. English literature is what I read. When my first novel came out and people said he’s like Philip Roth, I hadn’t read any Philip Roth then. I was what was called a Leavisite, and if you know Leavis, I was taught by F.R. Leavis, and those of us who were taught by F.R. Leavis believe that D.H. Lawrence was the last great English novelist and he died in 1930 and that was that. I hadn’t read modern books. And I went on to read Roth and I thought, Christ being compared to him ain’t bad—he’s some writer! He’s fantastic! And then I went on to read him more, and Saul Bellow, and I became more consciously working a bit like them, but not in their tradition. Their Jewish roots are in European novels. They’re sort of Kafka and Dostoyevsky and Babel and the better for it. I—and I’ve made this joke about myself—I’m not the English Philip Roth, I’m the Jewish Jane Austen. As far as I’m concerned I’m an English novelist working absolutely square in the English tradition. I’m regional to the degree that I’m Manchester. I try to write the sentences of a centralized, cosmopolitan English writer who has read all the great English writers. The voices in my head are Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Dickens, George Eliot.

And then onto that, I have laid—and God knows why, it has astonished my parents—this whole Jewish palaver. My parents didn’t get it. “Where’s this from?” my dad said. On his death bed, my dad said, “You’re not going to be a rabbi, are you?” I thought he’d be proud of me. Well, he was proud of me. But I thought, “Look, look at all this Jewishness that you wanted me to go in for. You wanted me to have a Jewish wife, you wanted me to give you Jewish grandchildren, what I’m really giving you now are Jewish books.” And he thought they were great, but he didn’t get it.

I never thought when I was trying to write in my 20s and even in my 30s, that I was going to write about Jews. But I wasn’t getting anywhere not writing about Jews. I couldn’t write a page.

Margaret Drabble wrote an essay for Tablet Magazine and singled you out for your exceptional novels, and then told us that there isn’t much anti-Semitism in England. How are the Jews of England doing these days?

The novel I’ve just published—about which I saw a very interesting review on Tablet the other day—raises this question. Do you know? We don’t know. This is the thing we don’t know. The last time I was in America talking about Kalooki Nights, many people asked me there what’s it like in England. There was a real sense of, “What’s it like on the streets of England for a Jew to go walking without a bodyguard?” That Muslim extremists would attack him; that ordinary English anti-Semites would attack him. It isn’t like that. I don’t need to tell you that. It doesn’t feel like a dangerous country to be Jewish in.

There is a sense that when something like Gaza erupts, the flotilla episode erupted, things get said by the intelligentsia that feed down into the populace, and every now and then you know someone will kick a Jew. At the time of Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza thing, there were probably several dozen, maybe even a few hundred anti-Semitic incidents here, some of them truly violent, people really being physically attacked, sometimes abuse, upsetting things like Jewish kids at school being told by Muslim kids at school, “Your people are killers,” and all of that. How do you measure that? How do you decide what any of that is? There’s always been low-level bits of skinhead brutality: A Jew is somebody you push around. There’s always been a little of that.

What we don’t know and what we’re all trying to figure out and measure, those of us who think this is worth putting our mind to, is how far the rhetoric of anti-Zionism is spilling over into another thing, through the sheer violence and virulence of its own language. Because it might very well be that a person might say, “I’m not anti-Semitic, not at all, my best friends are Jews”—you know the story—“I just think this has to be said.” But it might be that if enough people are saying that, then a kind of linguistic climate is created in which people feel Jews are what they’ve always felt Jews to be: fair game.

Do you find yourself feeling obliged to defend Israel’s right to do all kinds of bad things that other nations do to survive?

Oh, non-stop. I write a column in the Independent, which has some journalists who are known throughout the world for their undisguised, and perfectly well-expressed and declared anti-Zionism and worse, and I have to bite my tongue off each week. Do I now become a person who writes about nothing but Israel? Is there or isn’t there something to complain about? Are we going mad by thinking that there is? Does it make sense to shut up? And sometimes, quite simply, can you afford to go on thinking about this? Can you wake up each morning, and go to the computer, and go to the websites, go to the hate sites and then go to the few sites in which the people are calmer and take a more rational approach to these things. When I was writing The Finkler Question, this is what was happening.

And we’re not just talking about those bloody settlements. I’d go out with my own bare hands and pull them down. I want to throttle [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu for not knowing that you’ve got a golden opportunity here: Stop the bloody settlements. It’s not that kind of thing, which is perfectly fair. It’s the other stuff, that goes from that to “Israel is an apartheid country,” which is rubbish, “Israel is a fascist country,” “Israel is a Nazi country,” to “Zionism has always been colonialist in ambition,” to a whole false re-evaluation of the history of Israel, as though what Israel at its very worst now and then is is what Israel was always bound to be and always had to be. And that’s unforgivable.

I remember very vividly in 1967, the Six-Day War. I remember it vividly because I was at sea. I was coming back from Australia from my first job in Australia and the ships were disrupted and we had to go a long way around. I remember reading the newspapers on the boat—could we have gotten newspapers on the boat? Yes, as we landed—and my sense was that the whole world felt that Israel was about to be beaten and about to be destroyed, and everybody was on its side, poor little Israel. And the moment Israel won, you could almost start to see people’s expressions change. Israel winning became a problem. And Israel winning big became a bigger problem. Israel swaggering around—well, Israel swaggering around is a problem for all of us—Israel not in trouble, not under threat has been a problem for people, and you have to ask, Why is that?

It’s one thing to feel, “Those poor Jews, they’re about to be murdered,” and another thing to feel, “Those bastard Jews have just won.”

How do you see the relationship between Jewishness and Britishness? Is there a connection or affinity, or is it just an accident?

It’s an accident. There isn’t an affinity. Except of course there’s a puritan tradition in English literature, which I quite like, actually. My old teacher F.R. Leavis made bones about his really being in sympathy a sort of Puritan. That’s got its roots in the Old Testament. They read the Old Testament, studied the Old Testament, and a kind of biblical connection between the Jews and the English. But essentially, temperamentally, no. And that’s been my great challenge, really, to try and sell it. Can I sell it to the English? Here’s Jane Austen’s world, I’ll beef it up a bit with some Yiddish expressions, with some Yiddish obscenities, even. But the real way in which this has expressed itself is through comedy.

Continue reading: the prospects for a Jewish prime minister, and ping-pong champion Marty Reisman.

Mark Alan Stamaty

Is it an accident that today’s Internet is being heralded (and condemned) as a Jewish invention? In contrast to the Internet in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s—built by veterans of the top-down, systems-oriented hardware and information technology businesses—the new Web is a paradise for commentary, an elastic and amorphous collection of like-minded people bound together by shared and self-selected affinities and a global search for kinship and knowledge. Decentralized, diasporic, and sustaining what author Benedict Anderson has called “imagined communities” across national and ethnic divides, the complex architecture of social networking sites and search engines reflects and transmits a deep-seated affinity with what might be called the Jewish Basic Operating System (JBOS). And this merry-go-round of social networks, viral YouTube videos, and chains of conspiratorial misinformation and debunking—propelled by Jewish-owned companies like Google, Facebook, and Oracle—isn’t just affecting our daily lives; it’s also reshaping our idea of diplomacy, governance, and war—especially in the Middle East.

In this week’s Web Wars! series of articles, Tablet Magazine explores the “Jewishness” of the Web, “messaging” and “counter-messaging” in information warfare, and the capability these new offensive weapons may have to succeed where diplomats and military commanders have so far failed: in halting Iran’s march toward a nuclear bomb.

Monday, October 4: “Web Jew.0,” by Liel Leibovitz. Muslim zealots claim the Internet is a Jewish conspiracy. What if they’re right?

Tuesday, October 5: “Coded,” by Yossi Melman. Israel may or may not have been behind the Stuxnet attack on Iran—and it doesn’t matter whether it was.

Tuesday, October 5: “Modern Warfare, Too,” by Michael Tanji. The Stuxnet attack on Iran is a new development in the evolution of cyberwarfare.

Wednesday, October 6: “Messaging System,” by Lee Smith. Iran maintains an information-warfare front—it’s called Hezbollah.

Thursday, October 7: “Mind Games,” by Phil Taylor. A brief history of information warfare.

Thursday, October 7: “Theater of War,” by Amy Zalman. Israel beats its enemies on the battlefield, but it loses the more important fight, for PR supremacy, to savvier operators like Hezbollah.

Ritual and Observance:

Rosh Hashanah: A Guide for the Perplexed: Everything you ever wanted to know about the holiday, by the Editors

Holiday in the Hinterland: Once home to Jewish immigrants, a South African city today hosts a very different sort of Jewish practice, by Eve Fairbanks

On One Foot: A new Nextbook Press biography of Hillel makes clear that the rabbi’s words and thoughts—though millennia old—resonate today, by Joseph Telushkin

United State: A recent contretemps in Israel served to underscore the surprising and recent cohesion among the branches of U.S. Judaism, by Jonathan D. Sarna

Parts of the Whole: In the reflective period of the High Holidays, Tablet Magazine—together with rabbis and writers—considers the debate over Jewish identity and makes an argument for inclusiveness, by Alana Newhouse

Into the Jewish People: The rabbi who co-officiated at the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding on his journey to accepting intermarriage, by James Ponet

The Jews’ Jews: Anti-Semites paint Jews as different and strange; many Jews do the same to the so-called ‘ultra-Orthodox’, by Avi Shafran

Visiting the Dead: A visit to New York’s Mount Carmel Cemetery highlights how far American Jews have drifted from their immigrant anecestors, geographically and ritually, by Vox Tablet

My Education: What I learned about myself and my family by leading High Holiday services at UCLA, by Mayim Bialik

Blow, Gabriel, Blow: Learning about the shofar, then trying to play one, by Vox Tablet

Books:

Pilgrimage: Each year before Rosh Hashanah, thousands of Jews visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Rodger Kamenetz joined them and brought along a friend: Franz Kafka.

On the Bookshelf: High Holiday prayerbooks of every stripe, by Josh Lambert

Food:

Kitchen Conversions: Intermarried couples must learn new holiday recipes and traditions, by Joan Nathan

L’Chaim!: Six kosher wines to spruce up your holiday meals, by Mark Oldman

Market Value: With Rosh Hashanah falling earlier than usual, a chef offers holiday dishes built around late-summer produce, by Melissa Petitto

Happy New Year: A Manhattan bartender devises some Rosh Hashanah cocktails, by Marissa Brostoff

Taste Test: The Tablet staff discovers the perfect apple-honey combo, by the Editors

Ritual and Observance:

Yom Kippur: A Guide for the Perplexed: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Day of Atonement, by The Editors

Seeing Things: When fast-food-induced hallucinations of Chelsea Clinton precede Yom Kippur, extreme measures must be taken

First Draft: Envisioning a rabbi’s struggle to write an original Yom Kippur sermon, by Shalom Auslander

Print War: How the relationship between a reporter and his editor shook the Yiddish press, by Eddy Portnoy

In the Rearview: Novelist Darin Strauss talks about living with, and atoning for, a terrible car accident, by Vox Tablet

Shoes You Can Use: What to wear on Yom Kippur, when leather is banned, by Allison Hoffman

Pardon Me: My childhood bullying, and an attempt to atone for it, by David Rakoff

Hunger Games: How a current best-seller gets Yom Kippur shockingly right, by Marjorie Ingall

Music:

Sacred Remake: We may talk of its eternal qualities, but the music of Kol Nidre is forever being made anew, by Ari Y. Kelman

Melancholy Melody: Kol Nidre gets me every time, by Alexander Gelfand

Art:

Confessional Notes: An Israeli designer crafts an unorthodox ritual object for Yom Kippur, by Len Small

Shavuot FAQ: Everything you ever wanted to know about the Festival of Weeks, by the Editors

Field Study: Why the holiday of Shavuot is all but ignored across America, by Marissa Brostoff

At Sinai: A recent convert to Judaism discusses why Shavuot is her favorite holiday, by Siân Gibby

Food

Got Milk?: The complicated history of Jews and dairy, by Liel Leibovitz

Blintz Binge: One woman’s search for the perfect cheese-filled pancake, by Katie Robbins

Dairy Heirs: Shavuot and cheese, past and present, by Joan Nathan

Light and Sweet: Shavuot provides the perfect excuse for a cheesecake pilgrimage, by Blake Eskin

DAWN 2010

Sandra Bernhard Discusses Shavuot

Dawn 2010: The Mixtape

Davy Rothbart Tells Some Stories

Rodger Kamenetz Scans The Universe

Tiffany Shlain Premieres Her Film

Josh Kun Makes a Mix Tape

Eddy Portnoy Explains Nasalogy

Gary Shteyngart Answers Questions

Daniel Handler Mixes a Drink

Earlier this month, we asked our readers to get in touch with their inner 11th century poet and reimagine so-called “poet laureate of the Jewish people” Yehuda Halevi‘s words. And today, we’re proud to announce the winner: Susan Comninos, whose poem you can enjoy below. And then later, maybe put it in your pocket?

Congratulations, Susan!

“Can I do what I’ve vowed to and must?”
- Yehuda Halevi

COVET

Thou shalt not
bear the winds higher
than they would blow. Thou shalt never

prick halls of glass
with a bow and arrow. Thou shalt fail
to sway the sky

with the ceiling, stone
through the floor, leaves
with feeling – the dense weight

of a dank heart. Thou
shalt entertain no note
without instruments, sloth

without toil – sweat from strong languor.
Thou shalt not stroke
wood of others’

baseboards, nor
bewail banisters
to a barren house. Thou

shalt bring in bees
from the hive, swear
allegiance to their stings – sing alone

of a scant
incandescence: of a lion’s
fraught den, and no honeyed signs.

-Susan Comninos

21st century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. Halevi, writing from the ship that will take him to Palestine, addresses today’s poem to his friend Aharon el-Ammani, expressing his desire to visit him once more. Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

At such a time, my eyes can’t hold
The tears back any more.
They pour like hailstones,
Hot from a storm-lit heart.
To part from Yitzhak was the easy part,
Even though the shock of it was rude.
But now that Shlomo is gone, too,
I’m left in solitude
With no hope of seeing anyone again.
And that’s the last of all my friends from Spain!

21st century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. Halevi wrote today’s poem while far out at sea, where the world seemed deserted to him. “Neither bird, beast, nor man?” he asks. “Has nothing remained?” Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Be still, you booming surf, enough to let
A pupil go to kiss his master’s cheek!
(That’s Master Aaron, whose unflagging rod
The years have not made tremulous or weak.)
A teacher who never says, “The lesson’s done,”
A giver who never fears to give too much,
He makes me bless the east wind’s wings today
And curse tomorrow’s gusts out of the west.
How can a man who feels as though a scorpion
Has stung him leave Gilead’s balm behind?
How trade the shade of a grand, leafy tree
For winter’s ice and summer’s savagery,
The shelter of a masterly mansion
For the shriving of God’s rain and sun?

Twenty-first-century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday. But to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet Mag is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. In today’s poem, Halevi writes about an experience of religious devotion so intense that he longs for the day he will die and be closer to God. “Far from You,” he writes, “all life is dying; Death is life with You beside me.” Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Lord, You are my sole desire,
Though I keep it my soul’s secret.
Could I but do Your will and die
That moment, I would seek it.
Placing in Your hands my spirit,

I would sleep—and sweet such sleep is.
Far from You, all life is dying;
Death is life with You beside me.

And yet I know not how to further
Most my faith or best to serve it.
Instruct me in Your ways, then, Lord,
And free my mind from folly’s service.
Teach me while I have strength to suffer,
Nor despise my suffering
In the time still left before,
Myself a burden to myself,
My cankered bones fail to support me
And, my only choice submission,
I make the voyage to my fathers,
Stopping to rest at their last stop
Deep in the earth, I who once was
A sojourner upon its surface.

My young years thought of naught save themselves.
When will my world-sated soul save itself?
How worship my Maker when all He has made
Makes me passion’s captive and slave,
Or strive for the heights when at the day’s end
Sister worm awaits my descent?
How, even, be glad in glad times,
When none know what the future will spell,
And the days underwrite my decay
With the nights, half of me to dispel
To the wind and half to the dust?
What can I plead when I am pursued
By my lust from my youth to my wane?
What of this world but Your will is my share,
And if You are not mine, what is mine?
What more can I ask or declare?
I am naked of deeds, Your justice my only attire.
Lord, You are my sole desire.

21st century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. In today’s poem, Halevi speaks of the traumatic suddenness of his departure from Spain when he set out for Jerusalem: “I had no time to kiss my friends or family a last farewell.” Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Driven by longing
for the living God
to hasten to where
His anointed ones dwelt,
I had no time
to kiss my friends
or family
a last farewell;
no time to weep
for the garden I grew,
the trees watered and watched
as they branched and did well;
no time to think
of the blossoms they bore,
of Yehuda
and Azarel,
or of Yitzhak,
so like a son,
my sun-blessed crop,
the years’ rich yield.

Forgotten are my synagogue,
the peace that was
its study hall,
my Sabbaths
and their sweet delights,
the splendor of
my festivals:
I’ve left them all.
Let others have
the idol’s honors
and be hailed—
I’ve swapped my bedroom
for dry brush,
its safety
for chaparral,
the scents
and subtle fragrances
that cloyed my soul
for thistles’ smells,
and put away
the mincing gait
of landlubbers
to hoist my sail
and cross the sea
until I reach
the land that is
the Lord’s footstool.

21st century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. In today’s poem, Halevi speaks of the traumatic suddenness of his departure from Spain when he set out for Jerusalem: “I had no time to kiss my friends or family a last farewell.” Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Has a new Flood drowned the alnd
And left no patch of dry ground,
Neither bird, beast, nor man?
Has nothing remained?
A strip of bare sand
Would be balm for the mind;
The dreariest plain,
A pleasure to scan.
But all that is seen
Is a ship and the span
Of the sea and the sky, and Leviathan
As he churns up the brine,
Which grips the ship as the hand
Of a thief grips his find.
Let it foam! My heart bounds
As I near the Lord’s shrine.

20th century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. Today’s poem is an ode to Jerusalem that, Halkin points out, several centuries later was a favorite of the Jewish-born German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine. Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Zion! Do you wonder how and where your captives
Are now, and if they think of you, the far-flocked
remnants?
From north and south, east, west, and all directions,
Near and far, they send their greetings
As I send mine, captured by my longings
To weep like Hermon’s dew upon your mountains.
Mourning your lowliness, I am the wail of jackals;
Dreaming your sons’ return, the song of lute strings.
My heart stirs for Peniel, and for Bethel, and all those
places
With their pure traces of God’s presence, where your
gates,
Facing the portals of the highest heavens,
Stand opened by your Maker. You He illumines
Not with the sun, or moon, or stars, but with the rays
Of His own glory. Gladly I would choose
To pour my soul out where your chosen ones
Stood in a downpour of God’s effluence.
You are the throne of the Lord, His royal house –
How then are slaves enthroned in your lords’ houses?
If only I could wander past the way points
Where God appeared to your appointed and your
seers,
And, flying to you with a bird’s wings,
Shake woeful head, remembering the throes
Of your dismemberment, my face
Pressed to your earth, cherishing its soil and stones –
Yes, even so, the graves of patriarchs.
Wondrous in Hebron at your choicest tombs,
I would cross Gilead, and Carmel’s woods,
And stop to marvel at your lofty peaks
Across the Jordan, on which, illustrious,
Lie buried the two greatest of your teachers.
Your very air’s alive with souls;
Your earth breathes incense and your rivers
Run with balm. I would rejoice
To walk with my bare feet, in tatters,
Upon the ruins of your Sanctuaries,
In which, before it was removed from us,
The Holy Ark stood guarded by its Cherubs
Posted at the innermost of chambers –
And then, all worldly pomp cast off, I’d curse
The fate that did defile your peerless pilgrims.
How could I eat or drink, seeing the dogs
Make off with the remains of your proud lions?
How find the daylight sweet when my two eyes
Were forced to witness crows feast on your eagles?

Enough, desist from me, O cup of sorrows,
Drained to the dregs of all its bitterness!
Zion! God’s love, combined with Beauty’s grace,
Has bound to you the souls of all Your friends,
So that they joy when you’re at peace
And weep when you’re all wounds and wilderness.
Imprisoned, they yearn for you, each from his place
Turning to bow in prayer to your gates –
Your many flocks, dispersed to distant hills
Yet ever mindful of their vows
To re-ascend to you and reach your heights,
As the palm tree, rising above all else,
Is scaled by the bold climber. Who compares
To you? Not ancient Babylon, nor Greece:
What are all their empty oracles
Beside your Prophets and the breastplates of your priests?
The heathen kingdoms lapse, collapse, and pass,
But you remain forever, crowned for the ages.
God makes His home in you: Blesséd are those
Who dwell with Him, residing in your courts.
Blesséd is he who comes, and waits, and sees
The rising sun illuminate your dawns,
In which your steadfast share the happiness
Of your lost Youth, restored as it once was.

Twentieth-century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. Today’s first short poem—actually a fragment—is, as Halkin puts it, a “bantering quatrain” about a woman we know nothing about: maybe an actual love interest, maybe just a literary construct. The second poem is also about longing—for southern Spain, written while Halevi was living in the north. He would return many times to theme of homesickness. Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Ofra does her laundry in my tears
And dries it in the sunshine she gives off
She doesn’t need to take it to the trough,
Or wait to hang it till the weather clears,

***

A dove weeps in the treetops
And her sobs make my heart sore,
For its pangs are as her pain is
And my fate is shared by her.
I cry for kin and country,
She for her old nesting grounds;
I for my lost dear ones,
She for her scattered friends;
I for days long vanished,
She for youth now fled.

Working closely with the art directors, the web design intern will help design, program, and produce web pages for Tabletmag.com and Nextbookpress.com. The intern will also attend editorial meetings and learn the various production systems used. Interns will gain CMS experience (especially in WordPress), and should be fluent in social media (Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube). A working knowledge of HTML, PHP, and Photoshop is desirable. Software fluency in Flash, InDesign, and Illustrator is encouraged. Graduate students and undergraduate juniors and seniors are welcome to apply.

Web design applicants should submit a cover letter, resume, and portfolio that includes layouts, typography, or working website URLs, by April 30. All application material should be sent to design.intern@tabletmag.com.

Next month, Tablet Magazine is inaugurating a paid internship program. If you have experience in journalism and are familiar with the landscape of American Jewish life, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll be hiring three times a year—spring, summer, and fall—for two- and three-day-a-week internships at our office in New York City. Interns will assist the editorial staff with research and administrative tasks, as well as contributing blog posts and, potentially, full features. If you’re interested in applying for the upcoming summer term, which starts May 15, please send a résumé and three writing clips to our internship coordinator, Marissa Brostoff (mbrostoff@tabletmag.com), by Monday, May 3. We look forward to hearing from you.

20th century America is a little bit different. For most of us, poetry is something outside of the everyday—but to celebrate National Poetry Month, Tablet is trying to be a bit more like medieval Spain by including a Halevi poem, in Halkin’s new translation, on the Scroll each afternoon. In today’s poem, a young Halevi accuses a former lover of becoming his “murderess” by abandoning him: “That you have shed my blood, I have two witnesses—/Your lips and cheeks. Don’t say their crimson lies!” Enjoy your daily drink of Andalusian wine below—or download and print out a pocket-sized version here. Plus, check out a bonus poetry feature from our archives, and don’t forget to enter Nextbook Press and Tablet Magazine’s Yehuda Halevi poetry contest!

Why, my darling, have you barred all news
From one who aches for you inside the bars of his own ribs?
Surely you know a lover’s thoughts
Care only for the sound of your hellos!
At least, if parting was the fate reserved for us,
You might have lingered till my gaze had left your face.
God knows if there’s a heart caged in these ribs
Or it has fled to join you in your journeys.

O would that you wore me as a seal upon your arms
As I wear you on mine! May both my hands
Forget their cunning if I forget the days,
My dearest, of our love’s first bliss!
Hard for the heart made vagrant are the memories
Of your ambrosia on my lips – but could I mix
My exhalations with their perfumed essence,
I would have a way to kiss you always.
Are women praised for their perfections?
Perfection in you is praised for being yours.
The fields of love have many harvesters —
And your harvest is bowed down to by their sheaves.
God grant that I may live to drain the lees,
Once more, of your limbs’ sweet elixirs!
Although I cannot hear your voice,
I listen, deep within me, for your footsteps.
O on the day that you revive Love’s fallen legions
Slain by your sword, think of this corpse
Abandoned by its spirit for your travels!
If life, my love, will let you have your wishes,
Tell it you wish to send a friend regards.
May it bring you to your destinations,
And God return you to your native grounds!

To celebrate National Poetry Month, every day for the rest of April we will be presenting a Halevi poem a day—or an excerpt of one—in their beautiful modern translations by Hillel Halkin, whose biography of Halevi was published by Nextbook Press earlier this year. For today, here is a pocket-sized version of two of Halevi’s most famous poems, “My Heart in the East” and “On Boarding Ship in Alexandria,” for you to print, fold, and share.

We’re hoping that not only will you love these poems, but that they’ll also inspire your own reimaginings of Halevi’s work. To that end, a contest: compose a song using Halevi’s lyrics, or create an illustration or video inspired by his writing; anything that applies your own creativity to interpret one of these poems. We’ll select the best entries and post them to Nextbook Press and Tablet; one winner will be chosen to win an Apple iPad! Publish your entry on your blog or website and send us a link, or share it in the comments section below. Deadline is April 26, and we’ll announce the winner on Poetry in Your Pocket Day, April 29.

Download complete contest rules here.

Andre Aciman is a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author, most recently, of Eight White Nights.

Passover FAQ by the Editors
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Feast of Unleavened Bread

Ask, Don’t Tell by Vox Tablet
A father’s reflections on teaching his son the Four Questions

On the Bookshelf by Josh Lambert
Beyond Maxwell House: A haggadah roundup

Monkey Business by Marjorie Ingall
Just in time for Passover, an exhibition devoted to Curious George sheds light on the character’s genesis and his German-Jewish creators’ exodus

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Exodus ’56 by Adam Kirsch
A novel examines the parallel dislocations of Hungarian and Egyptian immigrants to Israel

Crash Course by Patrick Huguenin
Invited to a seder, a non-Jew quickly learns everything he can about making a kosher-for-Passover recipe

Repeat Performances by Dara Horn
What Jewish rituals and Judaism share with Civil War reenactment and Southern culture

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

‘I Lift My Lamp’ by Esther Schor
Including Emma Lazarus in the Passover seder reminds Jews to keep marching toward justice

Passover Pancake by Liel Leibovitz
This Passover, Daniel Boulud is borrowing a food staple from a different holiday

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Tablet Haggadah
Writers, artists, and a boxer meditate on the meaning of Passover

Paste Test by Joan Nathan
Comparing charosets—the date, nut, and wine concoction that sweetens the seder

Platonic Form by Judith Shulevitz
What makes the seder night different? Its Greek roots.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Piece Meal by Joshua J. Friedman
The first Passover celebrations included neither haggadah nor seder. With the passage of millennia, the two have become central elements. Herewith an interactive guide to the collage of texts that constitutes the holiday’s guidebook.

Dead Wrong by Liel Leibovitz
A haftorah of rigidity and ritual

Everything’s Coming Up Moses by Rachel Shukert
Songs from Tablet Magazine’s ‘Gypsy’-inspired Passover musical

Monday, March 29, 2010

Substitutions by Marjorie Ingall
For a kid-friendly Passover, try rounding out the seder plate with some off-menu additions

***

Elisa Albert, “When You Say You’re a Jew,” from the collection How This Night Is Different?

“Services?” Debra says, waiting for that moment when it becomes clear to the woman that she should envelop Debra in some sort of embrace. “Shabbat?” She fingers the phrase book but knows that nothing in it will be of any help. It is broken down into five sections: Conversation, Food, Transportation, Hospitality, Emergencies. There are things she wants, to communicate that are not included in these basics. Were there a Religion-Seeking section, perhaps things would be easier. “I have come for Shabbat services,” Debra would say. “I am a Jew.” And then, ritually, defensively, to explain her visage: “My mother converted.” Then she would flip over to the Food section: “What’s for dinner?”

The woman crosses her arms over her chest. They face off in monolingual obtuseness.

Okay, Debra thinks. It is Friday night; there must be Shabbat services. There are certain immutable rules involved with religion. Just because she is in a borderline second-world country (bastard child of Europe)—a place where she had, the day before, for complete lack of alternative, cuisine, been forced to eat tripe, for fuck’s sake—does not mean that she should feel stupid for having shown up, unannounced, at Lisbon’s only synagogue, sans a way back, at dusk on Shabbat. A Jew could do that, find a home anywhere in the world with other Jews. Wasn’t that the point of the entire freakin’ deal? Covenant, whatever?

***

Shalom Auslander,  Foreskin’s Lament

It was one thing to use the pay phone on Sabbath—doctors did it all the time. But getting into a car? Going to the mall? That was pretty serious. —Violating the Sabbath, I heard Rabbi Blowfeld say, —was like violating all 613 commandments. Moses had committed one sin in his whole life, and because of it, God killed him before he could reach the Promised Land. One sin. Sarah laughed—she chuckled— and, knowing that one day she would, God had made her barren.

I stood in the vestibule of the synagogue, waiting for my taxi, and wondered how God might punish me for 613 sins. Would He make me barren? Was there a Promised Land I would never reach? Maybe God had already punished me and I didn’t know it. Maybe He had killed my family. Maybe He burned down the house while I was walking here. Hadn’t I heard sirens earlier? Did killers break in after I had left? Were they in my house right now? Maybe they were tying my family up at this very moment, guns pressed to the side of their heads, and maybe God was waiting to see what I would do—if I left right now, He would make the kidnappers leave. But the moment I got in the cab. He would…

I jumped as the cabdriver leaned on his horn. I grabbed my bag, ran outside, dove into the backseat, and slammed the car door shut behind me.

Bam, 613 sins.

***

David Bezmozgis, “Minyan,” from the collection Natasha

Three Russians who didn’t understand Hebrew sat in the back of the synagogue. One was missing an arm. Two Polish Jews sat in front of them. One had his place by the partition so that he could stretch his bad leg, the other kept his walker near for emergency trips to the washroom. I was between them and the front row where my grandfather sat with two other men. Herschel, a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, sat beside my grandfather, and Itzik, a taxi driver from Odessa, sat beside Herschel. Zalman was at a small table beside the ark. On the other side of the partition were half a dozen women. There was no rabbi and so the responsibilities for the service were divided between Zalman, my grandfather, and Herschel. The task of lifting the heavy scrolls fell to me, as I was the only one with the strength to do it. The Saturday morning services started at nine and lasted for three hours. Most of the old Jews came because they were drawn by the nostalgia for ancient cadences, I came because I was drawn by the nostalgia for old Jews. In each case, the motivation was not tradition but history.

After services everyone went to the common room for a kiddush. Zalman brought a bottle of kosher sweet wine and a honey cake. The Russian man with one arm contributed a mickey of cheap vodka. It takes only one arm to pour and only one arm to drink. Thank God, he said, this is one thing where it is no disadvantage to be a one-armed man.

One of the women distributed the wine in small paper cups and also circulated a dish with the slices of cake. When everyone had drunk their wine and munched their cake, they wished one another a gut Shabbos and wandered alone or in small groups back to their particular lives.

***

Nathan Englander, from the title story of the collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

“You are pure,” Dov Binyamin said to the back of his wife, who—heightening his frustration—slept facing the wall.

“I am impure.”

“This is not true, Chava Bayla. It’s an impossibility. And I know myself the last time you went to the ritual bath. A woman does not have her thing—”

“Her thing?” Chava said. She laughed, as if she had caught him in a lie, and turned to face the room.

“A woman doesn’t menstruate for so long without even a single week of clean days. And a wife does not for so long ignore her husband. It is Shabbos, a double mitzvah tonight—an obligation to make love.”

Chava Bayla turned back again to face her wall. She tightened her arms around herself as if in an embrace.

“You are my wife!” Dov Binyamin said.

“That was God’s choice, not mine. I might also have been put on this earth as a bar of soap or a kugel. Better,” she said, “better it should have been one of those.”

***

Tova Mirvis, The Outside World

Their shul in Laurelwood was the largest of five. In the past ten years, it had expanded twice. A capital campaign was under way to raise money for yet another expansion, though there was no space left on this lot for one more inch of building. They already stretched to the curb. The parking lot had long ago been turned into the youth wing.

The men came first, filling the main section of the shul. The women came later. When shul was more than half over, it became the mommy hour. Hoping to arrive at the end of services, they walked slowly, laden with double strollers. The walkway that led to the front door had been transformed into a parking lot of Peg Peregos.

In the sanctuary, children roamed the aisles, while the men and women whispered in their respective sections. They spent so much time at shul that they knew how to make themselves at home. The service was like a show they had seen before. They knew all the words. They knew exactly what would happen. Sometimes they paid attention. Other times the prayers became the background noise to their whispered conversation.

***

Lev Raphael, “Another Life,” from the collection Secret Anniversaries of the Heart

Even at services, alone with the other men, trying to stay deep in prayer; his thoughts sometimes wandered: to a barefoot guy in cutoffs hosing down his car across the street, who’d glanced at him one morning as Nat entered the building; or two wide-backed, tanned bikers damp with sweat and exhaustion shouting to each other as they cut down the street; or even Italian looking Clark, who helped run the minyan, Clark whose weight lifting had left him as bulging and tight as a tufted leather sofa. Nat’s private gallery. He felt then lonelier than ever, tracing the path of his unquenched thirst for men, to be a man (was that different? the same?) back to childhood. When he had not felt this way? And what would it be like never to look at men but only see them: pure registration without excitement, interest, pain? He was always feeling helpless, like turning a corner in town and almost bumping into a guy in sweatpants with those seductive gray folds, whose belly seemed harder, flatter over the shifting, jock-rounded crotch, or watching someone’s tight, jutting ass in the locker room at the gym as he bent over to pull up his shorts.

Still, he could lose himself in prayer often enough, long enough. And then his sister, Brenda, finishing her Ph.D. at State, began to join him at services after he’d learned the cantillation for reading the Torah. With her, he felt more anchored, sure this might be an answer if only he waited. Brenda wasn’t pleased with sitting on the women’s side at first, but she respected what he’d learned, or at least all the weeks of practicing at her apartment with a tape recording, chanting to himself there because It drove neighbors at the dorm crazy. And he was pleased that his pretty sister drew attention from the men, as if her presence made him less of a shadow or a blank, less suspiciously alone. With Brenda at services, he felt he could be normal—or seem that way—and sometimes it was easier to concentrate. Thoughts of men were not so intense; she was like a powerful signal jamming pirate broadcasts.

***

Jonathan Rosen, Joy Comes in the Morning

That night was Shabbat. Deborah felt almost drugged as she stood up on the bimah of Temple Emunah in front of the congregation. The peaceful blue rug and the giant vases of white and yellow flowers, the rainbow light from the stained-glass windows as the sun set through the western exposure, the organ tones rising from their high, hidden pipes, the congregants dressed and expectant and spread out like a sea before her, usually filled Deborah with peaceful joy. But she felt like someone in a dream, naked and conspicuous and out of place. What was she doing up there? What was anyone doing there?

But that was her voice singing, “You shall love the Lord your God,” and that was her head bowed, adoring the “ever-living God.” And now Rabbi Zwieback was blessing the congregation, his stubby cloven like hooves, raised in benediction. She lifted her own hands mechanically. Cantor Baumwald sang “Shabbat Shalom” and it was over.

***

Philip Roth, “Defender of the Faith,” from Goodbye Columbus

I turned to Grossbart. “It’s five after seven. What time are services?”

“Shul,” he said, smiling, “is in ten minutes. I want you to meet Mickey Halpern, This is Nathan Marx, our sergeant.”

The third boy hopped forward. “Private Michael Halpern.” He saluted.

“Salute officers, Halpern,” I said. The boy dropped his hand, and, on its way down, in his nervousness, checked to see if his shirt pockets were buttoned.

“Shall I march them over, sir?” Grossbart asked. “Or are you coming along?”

From behind Grossbart, Fishbein piped up. “Afterward, they’re having refreshments. A ladies’ auxiliary from St. Louis, the rabbi told us last week.”

“The chaplain,” Halpern whispered.

“You’re welcome to come along,” Grossbart said.

To avoid his plea, I looked away, and saw, in the windows of the barracks, a cloud of faces staring out at the four of us. “Hurry along, Grossbart,” I said.

“O.K., then,” he said. He turned to the others. “Double time, march!”

They started off, but ten feet away Grossbart spun around, and, running backward, called to me, “Good shabbus, sir!” And then the three of them were swallowed into the Missouri dusk.

***

Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Wager,” from A Friend of Kafka and Other Stories

The Friday evening meal was over, but the candles were still burning in the silver candlesticks. A cricket chirped behind the stove, and the wick in the lamp made a slight sucking sound as it drew up the kerosene. On the covered table stood a crystal decanter with wine and a silver benediction cup, an engraving of the Wailing Wall upon it; near them lay a bread knife with a mother-of-pearl handle and a challah napkin, embroidered in golden thread.

The master of the house, still young, had blue eyes and a small yellow beard. His Sabbath caftan was not made of satin, as was the custom with the Hasidim, but of silk. He also wore a crisp collar around his neck and a ribbon that served as a tie. The mistress wore a dress with a design of arabesques and a blond wig adorned with combs. She had the face of a young girl: round, without a wrinkle, with a small nose and light-colored eyes.

Outside, the snow lay in great drifts, gleaming under the full moon. The frost was forever trying to paint a tree, a flower, a palm leaf, or a bush upon the windowpanes, but in the warmth of the room the patterns quickly melted away.

Featuring SANDRA BERNHARD, appearing for one night only at DAWN 2010 for a little conversation, commentary, kvetching, and cosmic exploration AND SPECIAL GUESTS, GARY SHTEYNGART, author of the internationally acclaimed novels The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan, making a rare West Coast appearance FOOL’S GOLD performing their special brand of dance party music that weaves western pop aesthetics with African rhythms, DANIEL HANDLER, aka Lemony Snicket, mixing up a special round of Shavuot cocktails with Lazlo’s BRYAN RANERE. Plus comedy, live music, theatrical and spoken word performances, premiere film screenings, visual arts, dancing, DJs, lectures, readings, open-space discussion forums and special guests.

Brought to you by Reboot, a non-profit organization that provides a forum to explore Jewish culture and traditions, in partnership with Tablet Magazine, a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas and culture.

Tickets on sale now.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: [a relative]
Date: Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 10:01 AM
Subject: RE: Let’s have a Real Anti-Apartheid Week

Dershowitz, the guy who voted for Obama, has my thousand dollars and those of many others in his pocket to represent Pollard and get him a fair sentence (going back 25 years ago), and the poor bastard is still in jail and will die in jail.

Anti-Semitism on the college campuses is a result of not enough Jews ready to slug it out with the Jew haters. Read the book “Nazis in Newark” and understand that when the Jews fought the Nazi brown shirts during the 30’s in Newark, the Jews won and the Nazis lost and the Nazi scum ran away from Newark like rats in the night because the Jews beat the crap out of them.

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: [recipient]
Sent: Sat, Mar 6, 2010 9:48 pm
Subject: Fwd: Dersh: Let’s have an Apartheid Week focusing on a real apartheid regime: Hamas.

Excellent article

—–Original Message—–
From: [sender]
Sent: Fri, Mar 5, 2010 11:53 am
Subject: Dersh: Let’s have an Apartheid Week focusing on a real apartheid regime: Hamas.

Let’s Have a Real Apartheid Education Week

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/05/let%e2%80%99s-have-a-real-apartheid-education-week-2/

Alan M. Dershowitz

Every year at about this time, radical Islamic students—aided by radical anti-Israel professors—hold an event they call “Israel Apartheid Week.” During this week, they try to persuade students on campuses around the world to demonize Israel as an apartheid regime. Most students seem to ignore the rantings of these extremists, but some naïve students seem to take them seriously. Some pro-Israel and Jewish students claim that they are intimidated when they try to respond to these untruths. As one who strongly opposes any censorship, my solution is to fight bad speech with good speech, lies with truth and educational malpractice with real education.

Accordingly, I support a “Middle East Apartheid Education Week” to be held at universities throughout the world. It would be based on the universally accepted human rights principle of “the worst first.” In other words, the worst forms of apartheid being practiced by Middle East nations and entities would be studied and exposed first. Then the apartheid practices of other countries would be studied in order of their seriousness and impact on vulnerable minorities.

Under this principle, the first country studied would be Saudi Arabia. That tyrannical kingdom practices gender apartheid to an extreme, relegating women to an extremely low status. Indeed, a prominent Saudi Imam recently issued a fatwa declaring that anyone who advocates women working alongside men or otherwise compromises with absolute gender apartheid is subject to execution. The Saudis also practice apartheid based on sexual orientation, executing and imprisoning gay and lesbian Saudis. Finally, Saudi Arabia openly practices religious apartheid. It has special roads for “Muslims only.” It discriminates against Christians, refusing them the right to practice their religion openly. And needless to say, it doesn’t allow Jews the right to live in Saudi Arabia, to own property or even (with limited exceptions) to enter the country. Now that’s apartheid with a vengeance.

The second entity on any apartheid list would be Hamas, which is the de facto government of the Gaza Strip. Hamas too discriminates openly against women, gays, Christians. It permits no dissent, no free speech, and no freedom of religion.

Every single Middle East country practices these forms of apartheid to one degree or another. Consider the most “liberal” and pro-American nation in the area, namely Jordan. The Kingdom of Jordan, which the King himself admits is not a democracy, has a law on its books forbidding Jews from becoming citizens or owning land. Despite the efforts of its progressive Queen, women are still de facto subordinate in virtually all aspects of Jordanian life.

Iran, of course, practices no discrimination against gays, because its President has assured us that there are no gays in Iran. In Pakistan, Sikhs have been executed for refusing to convert to Islam, and throughout the Middle East, honor killings of women are practiced, often with a wink and a nod from the religious and secular authorities.

Every Muslim country in the Middle East has a single, established religion, namely Islam, and makes no pretense of affording religious equality to members of other faiths. That is a brief review of some, but certainly not all, apartheid practices in the Middle East.

Now let’s turn to Israel. The secular Jewish state of Israel recognizes fully the rights of Christians and Muslims and prohibits any discrimination based on religion (except against Conservative and Reform Jews, but that’s another story!) Muslim and Christian citizens of Israel (of which there are more than a million) have the right to vote and have elected members of the Knesset, some of whom even oppose Israel’s right to exist. There is an Arab member of the Supreme Court, an Arab member of the Cabinet and numerous Israeli Arabs in important positions in businesses, universities and the cultural life of the nation. A couple of years ago I attended a concert at the Jerusalem YMCA at which Daniel Barenboim conducted a mixed orchestra of Israeli and Palestinian musicians. There was a mixed audience of Israelis and Palestinians, and the man sitting next to me was an Israeli Arab, who is the culture minister of the State of Israel. Can anyone imagine that kind of concert having taking place in apartheid South Africa, or in apartheid Saudi Arabia?

There is complete freedom of dissent in Israel and it is practiced vigorously by Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. And Israel is a vibrant democracy.

What is true of Israel proper, including Israeli Arab areas, is not true of the occupied territories. Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza several years ago, only to be attacked by Hamas rockets. Israel maintains its occupation of the West Bank only because the Palestinians walked away from a generous offer of statehood on 97% of the West Bank, with its capital in Jerusalem and with a $35 billion compensation package for refugees. Had it accepted that offer by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak, there would be a Palestinian state in the West Bank. There would be no separation barrier. There would be no roads restricted to Israeli citizens (Jews, Arabs and Christians.) And there would be no civilian settlements. I have long opposed civilian settlements in the West Bank, as many, perhaps most Israelis, do. But to call an occupation, which continues because of the refusal of the Palestinians to accept the two-state solution, “Apartheid” is to misuse that word. As those of us who fought in the actual struggle of apartheid well understand, there is no comparison between what happened in South Africa and what is now taking place on the West Bank. As Congressman John Conyers, who helped found the congressional Black caucus, well put it:

“[Applying the word “Apartheid” to Israel] does not serve the cause of peace, and the use of it against the Jewish people in particular, who have been victims of the worst kind of discrimination, discrimination resulting in death, is offensive and wrong.”

The current “Israel Apartheid Week” on universities around the world, by focusing only on the imperfections of the Middle East’s sole democracy, is carefully designed to cover up far more serious problems of real apartheid in Arab and Muslim nations. The question is why do so many students identify with regimes that denigrate women, gays, non-Muslims, dissenters, environmentalists and human rights advocates, while demonizing a democratic regime that grants equal rights to women (the chief justice and speaker of the Parliament of Israel are women), gays (there are openly gay generals in the Israeli Army), non-Jews (Muslims and Christians serve in high positions in Israel) and dissenters, (virtually all Israelis dissent about something). Israel has the best environmental record in the Middle East, it exports more life saving medical technology than any country in the region and it has sacrificed more for peace than any country in the Middle East. Yet on many college campuses democratic, egalitarian Israel is a pariah, while sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, terrorist Hamas is a champion. There is something very wrong with this picture.

Forward emails from your elders to elders@tabletmag.com.

———- Forwarded message ———-

Netanyahu, Don’t Crush Final Remnant of IDF Hero Roi Klein z”l!

Netanyahu, do not destroy the home of the widow and two orphaned children of IDF hero Roi Klein who shouted “Shma Yisrael” and jumped on a grenade during the Lebanon war to save his comrades.

Settlers are also human beings—their problem must be solved by issuing them the necessary governmental building permits.

Read more about Roi Klein here:

Imagine what feelings of contempt those children must grow up with, having lost their father as a hero giving his life for Israel, then having their home destroyed by the same army and government of Israel. May HaShem wake you up to the monstrosity of such a detestable deed.

Helen Freedman, New York city
We are appalled at the callousness and ingratitude of the Israeli government in allowing the destruction of Major Roi Klein’s home, considering his extraordinary act of bravery. If the government goes ahead with this, it will totally demoralize the country and make Israel a laughing stock amongst the nations.

Adam Klein, USA
This is absolutely tragic to destroy Roi Klein’s house. Another example of how the Israeli high Court and the Govt have NO CLUE! Jews are targeted the world over for hatred and here you have Jews wrecking the home of a Jewish hero—a real martyr. He’s not here to protect his family so what does the Govt do? Shame on you Israel!

Naomi Romm, Brooklyn
This must not be allowed to happen. It would plainly be a chilul Hashem.

Rabbi Chaim Pearl, New York
How can it be that a Jewish government will not have rachmanut on the widow and orphans of a gibor and kadosh like Roie Klein hy”d

Barbara Eyges, Marblehead
Please help this widow and her children stay in their home. Her husband is a true hero and she deserves to be helped. Jews must help other Jews.

Dr Netta Kohn DorShav, Yerushalayim
Israel has been known to destroy the homes of terrorists who murder, maim and seek to destroy us. Heaven forbid that this should be the reward meted out to our pure heroes. Rather, Roi’s home should become a shrine of inspiration and a protected site.

Anonymous
G-D wins our battles and returns us to our lands, and we turn around and give it away. G-D gives us heroes who give their lives for the Jewish people and our holy land and we punish them and their families. G-D gives us intelligence and we cower to the “defuk” opinions of foreign powers. I love Israel but am disgraced by our government who considers destroying Jewish homes and throwing Jews out of Eretz Yisroel. Don’t we have enough nations trying to destroy us from without that we need to assist in destroying ourselves from within? Disgraceful.

Stephanie Taylor, Ginot Shomron
To demolish the home of a national hero who saved lives by sacrificing his own life is the ultimate disgrace any Israeli government can do. Anyway this land was given to the Jewish people by the G-d of Israel and anyone who does not believe the Jews should live here is definitely not a Jew. And any government who demolishes this home is an evil government!

Yaakov Herskovich, New York
Please do not destroy the home of Roi Klein, you will not get world approval no matter what you do, so you have to decide if it’s more important to you to protect your citizens or to get world approval which you will never get anyways because eisav sonei es yaakov tell obama to jump in the lake and share the white house with the indians

Roberta E. Dzubow
Do not disgrace yourself by destroying this home and dishonoring this soldier. Shame, Shame—this is a terrible injustice!

No thanks, just take me to the first installment.
]]> http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/26277/sign-up-for-the-frozen-rabbi/feed/ 0 http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/24116/intellectual-jihad/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=intellectual-jihad http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/24116/intellectual-jihad/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:00:33 +0000 Tablet Magazine http://www.tabletmag.com/?p=24116 With the 2003 publication of his groundbreaking book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman became one of the most influential and incisive interpreters of Islamist political discourse for a general audience in America and England. A protégé of the literary critic and socialist intellectual Irving Howe, Berman was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for his writing about politics and literature and the revolutionary aspirations of the social movements that came out of the 1960s in Latin America and elsewhere. He is currently finishing a book about the Islamist intellectual superstar Tariq Ramadan and his Western intermediaries, like Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, which came out of a controversial piece that Berman wrote denouncing Ramadan and his Western admirers for The New Republic. Berman’s new book, Flight of the Intellectuals, is due out from Melville House in April.

Tablet sat down with Berman to talk about the State Department’s decision on Wednesday to reverse the Bush Administration’s policy to ban Tariq Ramadan from the United States and instead to grant him a visa to speak on the U.S. lecture circuit.

Tariq Ramadan is coming to America. Is it a mistake for the Obama administration to let him in?

It’s a good move for the U.S. to encourage freedom of speech and open debate. It’s a mistake, however, to imagine that he has positive contributions to make.

Ramadan has no deep, important thoughts we need to hear?

I do think it’s worth the trouble to look into his deep thoughts, and to notice how problematic they are. He can say something attractive at the level of a slogan; but when you examine it more closely it turns out to have unexpected meanings. He opposes terrorism but he does it with a series of asterisks. If you read the footnote in tiny print you discover some troubling aspects regarding terrorism, and this is borne out by the fact that he did donate money to a Hamas charity. To do so was not illegal at the time, and he has himself argued he didn’t know where his money was going. But if you read Ramadan carefully you would not be surprised to learn he donates money to such groups.

In my book I have more to say about Ramadan’s own philosophical ideas, which I find pretty appalling and obscurantist.

How can so many Western intellectuals, like Buruma and Garton Ash, just to name two, be so wrong about Ramadan?

The main reason they are attracted to Ramadan’s ideas is because of a bias against Muslims that leads many people to think the Muslim world, which contains 1.5 billion people, is incapable of producing genuinely attractive thinkers. Of course this is untrue, but because so many people believe it, they turn to Tariq Ramadan.

Another reason is that there is a Western fantasy that some messianic Muslim figure will step forward and resolve all the outstanding problems between Islam and the West. There’s a search for the great Muslim hope. Ramadan is put into that role, and he puts himself into it. To imagine that such a figure will step forward also reflects a bias against the Muslim world, since it suggests there is such a thing as the Muslim world—when in fact there is not any such thing. Islam has 10,000 sects and heresies and 100,000 episodes in its history, on the one hand. On the other hand, there are 56 states in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, each of which has its own history. So we’re talking about 1.5 billion people resting on 1,400 years of history. It’s absurd to think of this as constituting a single unit. The idea that it does constitute a single unit is a doctrine of the Islamist movement—with a single movement you have a single leader, like the caliph.

The defense of Tariq Ramadan in intellectual circles reflects a series of unexamined and in some cases very unattractive assumptions. I have expressed myself on this and will be doing so again at length, with gusto.

Tale of the Tapes: Orand’s dirty phone calls with the man she says is Tropper

Converted: When Shannon Orand asked Rabbi Leib Tropper to help her study to become a Jew, he asked for sexual favors in return, she says

Prodigal Son: Guma Aguiar, together with his billionaire uncle, who’s the board president at the 92nd Street Y, bankrolled a New York rabbi trying to control the standards for conversion to Judaism. Now, amid a messy family feud, he’s been committed to a mental hospital.

Among Friends: Leib Tropper spent his way into the rabbinic elite—and, even after his fall, those other rabbis are unwilling to condemn him

—–Original Message—–
From: [Recipient]
To: Naomi Ragen
CC: [Another distribution list]
Subject: RE: The Unforgiven: Jimmy Carter
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 06:17:36 -0500

Naomi, Thanks for sending this email. This is an important read. I wonder how the 80% Hebrews who refused to follow Moshe Rabbeinu into the exodus from Egypt, the nearly same number who voted for Obama, are reacting to Mr Graulich’s thoughts.

—–Original Message—–
From: Naomi Ragen
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 1:53 AM
To: [Distribution list]
Subject: The Unforgiven: Jimmy Carter

Dear Friends,

Are we impressed by Jimmy Carter’s belated apology? Me thinks not. His change of heart, which has conveniently come about just as his grandson is about to start a political career in which he needs Jewish votes, doesn’t pull at my heartstrings. Irwin N. Graulich, whose “Drop Dead Jimmy Carter” is making the internet rounds, I guess is of the same opinion.

Be warned: Not for the faint or forgiving of heart.

Naomi

Drop Dead Jimmy Carter

Sorry Mr. President–I just don’t forgive you. How dare you think you can demonize one of the most moral nations in history–and get away with your crimes. How dare you blame Jews for your pathetic world view, which gave credibility to the most evil characters on the face of the planet. Your apology is worthless.

President Jimmy Carter will undoubtedly be known as the worst president in American history. He allowed the Shah of Iran to fall and the evil Khomeni to gain power, giving Muslim extremism the fuel to spread like cancer throughout the world–ultimately leading to 9/11. His presidency was a true calamity from interest rates skyrocketing to 21.5% to the disastrous rescue attempt of the US embassy hostages, to the Carter “malaise” he created throughout America. A total catastrophe and tragedy would sum up the Carter administration at its best. I mean, a born and bred true Polish anti-western antisemite in the tradition of those who aided the Nazis, actually became his National Security Advisor—Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Carter’s cute little “al chayt” prayer of forgiveness is as impressive as Jeffrrey Dahmer’s apology cries. The ex-President finally realizes what a total putz he is–so what? “We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel,” Carter wrote recently. Please Jimmy, save those platitudes for your wife.

You cannot write books filled with outright lies about Israel and Jews, going on lecture tours and media interviews–fraudulently accusing Israel of apartheid, occupation, war crimes, terrorism, obstacles to peace, targeting innocents and other despicable labels. And then you beg for forgiveness? I mean is that a joke Jimmy boy?

Ex-President Carter recently met with Hamas–the modern day version of the Nazis. Chamberlain redux? No, Carter is much, much worse. What Jimmy Carter has done is join the list of well known historical antisemites to create a new type of Jewish Blood Libel. With tremendous passion and foolishness, Carter pretty much alone gave credibility to the “Israel Blood Libel,” which propagated throughout mainstream Western democracies, especially in Europe, to falsely accuse Israel and Jews of using Arab/Muslim blood to expand Israel’s territory.

In a similar vein to his fellow antisemites throughout history, Carter focused on the blood of children in Gaza and the West Bank, as if Israel purposely targeted non Jewish children to explain their horrific deaths. The fact that terrorists stationed their weapons and missiles in schools was totally irrelevant to the Jimmy Carter immoral psyche.

These Jewish Libel accusations by someone who was an ex-president of the United States gave instant credibility to the lies coming out of the Arab and Muslim world. The original Jewish Blood Libel gave rise to attacks on Jews from the first century through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, right up until the Nazi era. It was pretty much Jimmy Carter who created the modern day scenario which spurred attacks on Jews in France, England, Spain, Belgium, Mumbai, and many other countries.

It was obvious to Jews throughout history that the Jewish Blood Libel was all based on lies because the Jewish Bible, the Torah contains many specific laws against using blood in any way–even animal blood. This same Bible is filled with laws pertaining to the sin of harming innocents. Therefore, this concept of being extremely sensitive to hurting innocent people has become dominant in the Jewish psyche and behavior.

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However, due to Carter’s Christian faith, he actually believes that all Jews should and will actually forgive him, showing a major difference between Judaism and Christianity about sin and forgiveness. Since Jesus’ death atones for the sins of those who have faith in Him, Carter mistakenly thinks that all Jews will ultimately forgive him and move on.

However, only non-Jewish Jews like Abe Foxman of the ADL, who have almost no knowledge of Judaism, will forgive Carter for his massive evil. According to Judaism, God Himself cannot forgive anyone for sins against another person. The only way that Carter can actually be forgiven, would be to go to every Jew worldwide and ask for forgiveness–not make his blanket empty announcement, because his grandson is running for office in a Jewish district in Georgia.

What is ironic about Carter is that he has committed the same “libel accusations” on America, creating the American Blood Libel. Carter’s comments over the last decade have included the rhetoric that “America is a torturer at Abu Ghraib, has performed criminal acts by water boarding in Guatanamo, we’re occupiers in Iraq and colonialists, we attack Arab countries for Halliburton or for oil,” etc. etc. Some day we can all expect an empty Carter apology to America.

So for the damage that Jimmy Carter has caused to both Israel and America, I do not forgive him and neither do many millions of other Jews or Americans. The best I can do for one of the most horrific American men of the past 3 decades is say, “Drop Dead Jimmy Carter,” and then you can ask your maker for forgiveness.