Journalist Dara Horn was determined to tell his story. In a revelatory Kindle Single published today by Tablet Magazine, Horn reports on how Fry came to his rescue work and what became of him after the war. (You can read a preview on Tablet.) But how did this hero decide whom to save in the first place? Horn spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivy about Fry’s exploits, the arguably eugenics-like nature of his mission, the cultural heritage that was not protected by his and other rescue missions, and why so few know of his heroic work. [Running time: 22:09]

The novel, Auslander’s first, is both entertaining and disconcerting and Auslander, a Tablet columnist, joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss German tourguides, Palestinian cabdrivers, and the pros and cons of living with hope. (To buy tickets to see Auslander discuss the novel in person on January 25 in San Francisco, click here.) Warning: The interview includes explicit language. [Running time: 20:51.]

Today, the language is all but forgotten, except by those like Jagoda who spoke it growing up. The group has grown to include more than 20 participants. At their monthly meetings—which members call vijitas de al’had, or “Sunday visits,” after a centuries-old tradition from the Old Country—the men and women eat Sephardic treats, sing songs, and study a Judeo-Spanish reading exercise, complete with vocabulary lists. Vox Tablet’s Julie Subrin visited their annual Hanukkah gathering in 2009 for this audio postcard from our archives. [Running time: 7:33.]

This film is not covering entirely new turf. In 2001, Sandi Dubowski’s Trembling Before G-d also profiled gay Orthodox men and women. But DevOUT’s subjects are are settling down, raising families, and forcing their communities to come to terms with their existence, with varying degrees of success.

Neille, from South Africa, and Gulzar, from Pakistan, made the film while master’s students at the Columbia University School of Journalism. Neille spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry from her home in Johannesburg, about the movie, the difficulties their subjects have faced, and how these two non-Jewish, straight women made such a powerful film on such a sensitive topic. [Running time: 18:13.]

Eric Molinsky worked in the animation industry, and has long wondered not only if the claims of Disney’s anti-Semitism are true but also why they remain a point of fascination and ridicule among cartoonists and others nearly a half-century after his death. For this week’s Vox Tablet, Molinsky, now a radio producer, spoke to an animation historian, a Disney-obsessed playwright, and a fairy-tale scholar in an effort to understand if Disney the man, or Disney’s world view, was truly bad for the Jews. [Running time: 10:37.]

Basya Schechter invites Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry into her home in downtown Manhattan to talk about the connections between Heschel’s little-known poetry and his later works, and about her own journey from yeshiva girl to widely acclaimed singer-songwriter. [Running time: 24:06.]

The result is Woody Allen: A Documentary, a three-hour, two-part film for which Allen granted Weide extensive access to his life. It premieres Sunday night on PBS, as part of the “American Masters” series.

Weide joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss why he makes films about comedians, how Allen directs his films, and what made Woody finally say OK. [Running time: 18:51.]

These are questions from the Jewish Ethnographic Program, a vast questionnaire developed by ethnographer S. An-sky between 1912 and 1914 for dissemination throughout the Pale of Settlement, the part of Eastern Europe that was then home to 40 percent of the world’s Jews. An-sky, best known as the playwright of The Dybbuk, hoped the questionnaire would record waning folk beliefs and practices that he believed were at the core of Jewish life. But World War I interfered, and his ethnographic expedition was called off. An-sky died in 1920, and Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement would soon disappear forever.

Now the entire questionnaire, originally written in Yiddish, has been made available in English, in The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement. Nathaniel Deutsch, a professor of literature and history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, consulted with Yiddishists, former shtetl inhabitants, and Brooklyn-based Hasidim to produce this translation. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry spoke to Deutsch, who argues that the questionnaire, while clearly a failed endeavor, nevertheless reveals many details about shtetl life that would otherwise be lost. [Running time: 27:42.]

At their respective pulpits, physical and virtual, Andy Bachman, senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Marc Tracy, Tablet Magazine’s Scroll blogger, have had a lot to say about the movement since its inception. This week on Vox Tablet, the two join host Sara Ivry to lay out their arguments for and against the movement. (Of course, being liberals, neither man is unequivocal in his position.) [Running time: 27:00.]

Brooks joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry on the podcast to discuss the perils of dressing up like a zombie on Halloween, the particular horrors that a zombie infestation represents to Jews, and the origins of his own zombie fears—traced to one fateful night circa 1985 when Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft opted not to hire a babysitter. [Running time: 14:40.]

With the help of journalist David Landau, Peres has written a new biography of Ben-Gurion, his mentor: Ben-Gurion: A Political Life, available now from Nextbook Press. Landau, a former editor of Haaretz and Israel correspondent of The Economist, spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about Ben-Gurion, his realpolitik approach to leadership, and what lessons his example can provide to Israel’s leaders today. [Running time: 30:09.]

The statue was dedicated 125 years ago this month. To mark the anniversary, Nextbook Press has produced an interactive version of the Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus,” annotated by the Princeton English professor Esther Schor, who wrote the biography Emma Lazarus for the Nextbook Press Jewish Encounters series. In 2006, Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry went to the Statue of Liberty ferry terminal to talk to visitors about Lazarus and solicit from them a group reading of her poem. Here’s a reprise of that installment. [Running time: 4:38.]

How, then, does a religious Jew who is deeply concerned about threats to the environment galvanize her community? Evonne Marzouk, the founder and executive director of Canfei Nesharim, a Jewish environmental organization, addressed that question for Vox Tablet. She spoke to host Sara Ivry about rabbinical and Torah-based justifications for making environmental sustainability a priority, her own journey to environmental advocacy, and the unique skills Orthodox Jews can bring to the challenges of sustainable living. [Running time: 19:38.]

For Vox Tablet, Fruchter and Jeremy Brown, Pitom’s violinist, played a stripped-down version of the track “Neilah,” and they explained to host Sara Ivry why a jazz-metal-rock take on the Day of Atonement seemed like a good idea. [Running time: 15:09.]

Inna Grade died last year. In the ensuing months, Yiddishists have thrilled to the possibility that they will finally gain access to her husband’s extensive archive and perhaps come upon an unpublished gem of a manuscript. For now, though, the hunt is on hold, as the public administrator of the Bronx has yet to determine which of six competing institutions will inherit Grade’s papers. Meanwhile, the archive is in the provisional custody of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the reasons for Chaim Grade’s relative obscurity, the ghosts lurking in the volumes he left behind, and his towering significance as a writer—Grade is to Vilna, Brent says, as William Faulkner is to the American South. [Running time: 26:21.]

Now she has written a second memoir, The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, that offers a loving and often devastating portrait of her mother and all that she sacrificed to keep her family intact, both in Egypt and in the United States. It also delves into Lagnado’s own painful experiences growing up, first as the daughter of protective Egyptian parents trying to find her way in 1960s America, then as a critically ill teenager (she was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma at 16 and spent the better part of a year undergoing radiation treatments), and, finally, as a young journalist making her way in the world.

Lagnado spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the high price of American assimilation, the difficulties of writing this book, and the ties that have bonded mothers and daughters in her family together across generations. [Running time: 25:16.]

Now Friedman has written Lucky Bruce, a memoir that takes readers from his Depression-era childhood in the Bronx to his time in Hollywood, with stops along the way at Elaine’s and other literati hangouts. He recalls his long friendships with Mario Puzo and Joseph Heller and recounts amusing run-ins with Norman Mailer, Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, and many others, all with his famous dark humor. His passion for writing, and admiration for those who do it well, is ever present. (You can read an excerpt from Lucky Bruce here.)

Tablet Magazine’s Ellen Umansky spoke to Friedman—or BJF, as he’s known to many—about his storied career. [Running time: 21:46.]

Gainsbourg was a mostly washed-up artist when he died at 62 of a heart attack, in 1991. But that’s not what Sfar wishes to remember in his first feature film, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, which opens next week in the United States. Rather, Sfar revels in Gainsbourg’s crash-and-burn approach to life as an outsider, from his cavalier embrace of the yellow star in 1941 to his 1978 recording of a reggae remix of the French national anthem. The film takes creative license with Gainsbourg’s life, just as Gainsbourg was prone to do, and includes some of Sfar’s favorite things: puppets, caricature, Jewish themes, and sex.

Vox Tablet’s Sara Ivry spoke to Sfar about Gainsbourg’s life, his love-hate relationships with France and with Jews, and Sfar’s own provocations as an artist and filmmaker. [Running time: 19:07.]

Hoffman is also the deputy editor of Nextbook Press, the book imprint affiliated with Tablet Magazine. He joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about the book, how his two careers—novelist and editor—influence one another, and his own experience finding acceptance as a gay Jew. [Running time: 16:09.]

On the eve of Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples and other catastrophic events in Jewish history, Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry spoke to Neria about his own wartime experiences and what his research has taught him about treating trauma. Neria was awarded a Medal of Valor for his service, and in 1986 he published the novel Esh, Hebrew for “fire,” a fictionalized account of his time in combat. He and Ivry discussed the psychological benefits and risks of revisiting traumatic events year after year, as Jews do with the ritual reading of the Book of Lamentations. [Running time: 20:00.]

Hypochondria is a staple of Jewish humor, but the neurotic disorder is by no means the exclusive domain of Jews, nor is it necessarily funny. Those who suffer from it are consumed by anxiety over the imagined progression of illness in their bodies and obsessively take note of symptoms real or imagined. It disrupts work and family life. And it taxes the healthcare system, as hypochondriacs seek second, third, fourth, and fifth opinions and demand test after test.

This week Vox Tablet presents the radio documentary “Living With Hypochondria: The Real Costs of Imagined Illness,” written and produced by Karen Brown and first aired on WFCR in New England. It takes an in-depth look at the disorder, from the perspective of those who suffer from it to clinicians studying its impact on individuals, families, and society. [Running time: 28:01.]

Janice Erlbaum is the author of Girlbomb and Have You Found Her. You can find more of her stories here. [Running time:10:20.]

Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry talked about the program with Bernhardt, discussing how the fellows were selected and whether Jerusalem can compete with European cities as a cultural capital. Ivry also spoke to the four fellows, who are headed to Jerusalem in October: urban planner David Karnovsky, visual artist Lynne Avadenka, theater director David Herskovits, and choreographer Donald Byrd. [Running time: 20:43.]

Miami-based radio producer Trina Sargalski trailed Betty on one of her Sunday-morning shifts and sent us this dispatch. [Running time: 7:13.]

As the 20th century reached its midpoint, tunesmiths moved elsewhere. (The Brill Building, famously home to later generations of songwriters, is just north of Times Square.) Old buildings came down while new ones went up, and our portion of West 28th is now a bustling commercial hodge-podge bookended by the flower district to the west and the perfume district to the east. To learn more about our new neighborhood—where Emma Goldman founded her anarchist magazine, too, and Zero Mostel had a painting studio—Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry spoke to Jim Mackin, a New York City historian and tour guide, about West 28th Street, how specialized commercial districts come into being, and Irving Berlin’s first big hit. [Running time: 16:17.]

By the late 1930s, things had changed dramatically. Puerto Barrios’ indigenous charms had been all but eradicated, replaced by filth and destitution. It was inhabited mostly by Afro-Guatemalans and West Indians who worked on the docks for pitiful wages; those with means were advised to get out of town as fast as they could.

It is here that we meet Samuel Berkow, the well-to-do German Jewish bachelor at the center of The Price of Escape, a new novel by David Unger. Berkow arrives in Guatemala from Hamburg, where the Nazi noose had begun to tighten around him. Berkow expects his arrival to mark the beginning of a new and exciting life. Instead, in just three days, Puerto Barrios—with its demons, drunks, and thugs—nearly finishes him off.

Unger, a Guatemala-born, Brooklyn-based writer, speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the relationship of Samuel Berkow’s history to his own, about the appeal of creating only semi-sympathetic protagonists, and about why most of his relatives refuse to read his work. [Running time: 15:16].

Greenberg made his major league mark in the 1930s and ’40s, playing primarily for the Detroit Tigers. He was a first-baseman and a phenomenal batter. In 1938, in a single season, he hit 58 home runs. He made the All Star team five times, was twice named American League MVP, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1956, and still holds the American League record for runs batted in by a right-handed batter in a single season: 183 in 1937. Over this entire career, he had a whopping 1,276 RBIs.

Like Koufax, Greenberg sat out a game that fell on Yom Kippur; in Greenberg’s case it was during the 1934 pennant race. It sealed his fate as Jewish hero in an era that was virulently anti-Semitic at home and abroad. Greenberg accepted this role graciously but with some discomfort. Writer Mark Kurlansky has a new biography out about the star. It’s called Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One. Kurlansky speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about Greenberg’s improbable status as a Jewish icon (he was far from observant), the challenges he faced as arguably the highest profile Jewish sportsman in the mid-1930s, and why he is not better remembered by baseball fans today. [Running time: 15:41.]

As the curtain rises on Baby It’s You, a new musical celebrating Greenberg’s life and work, Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry speaks with Slate Magazine music critic Jody Rosen about the obstacles Greenberg might have faced as a pioneering woman, about her ability to identify voices and styles that others didn’t think America was quite ready for, and about the real meaning of the song “Say a Little Prayer for You.” [Running time: 20:05.]

Exodus

The flat bread
that scratched

our throats
was not symbolic.

We left too quickly
to bring the symbols.

Neither did the bread
portend of manna.

It was bread.
We left

with the skin
on our backs,

with the imprint
of whips.

The symbols
came after,

finding us the way
a lost dog,

crossing deserts,
pinpoints the master

who can’t
live without him.

—Andrea Cohen

Macaroons

I get it now.
You’re dead.
You can’t do
everything
you used to.
Reruns instead
of new episodes.
I get it.
You can’t send
macaroons this Passover,
those dense confections
without flour, conforming
to the rules
of kashrut, the rules
of engagement, which
in the case of our people,
involved fleeing, trading
slavery for the desert.
The land of milk & honey
was a kind of paint-
by-numbers kit
everybody lugged
in his head through
sandy ditches. It’s
best not to commit
directions to Nirvana
to paper: they could be
stolen or confiscated, or
worse: the place itself
obliterated. Forty
years is a long time
to get where you’re going.
Where are you promised?
In the end you spoke
of a boat ride, of
booking passage second-
class, on a vessel that lacked
a rudder, an engine, a sail.
Kaput, you said.
You were looking
for a solution.
Why now? someone
asked—less question
than demand. You
had to go. I
get it. We prepped
you for a journey,
because the mind
gets stuck on the speed
bumps of Fin, of Finito.
The mind insists
on one more
road, one more hello.
I get it: you won’t
be posting macaroons
this year. No problem,
mom. Just send the recipe.

—Andrea Cohen

Paschal

Easter was the old North
Goddess of the dawn.
She rises daily in the East
And yearly in spring for the great
Paschal candle of the sun.

Her name lingers like a spot
Of gravy in the figured vestment
Of the language of the Britains
As Thor’s and crazed Woden’s
Stain Thursday and Wednesday.

O fellow-patriots loyal to this
Our modern world of high heels,
Vaccination, brain surgery:
May the old Apollonian flayers
And Jovial raptors pass over us—

Those ordainers of suppers
Of encrypted dishes: bitter, unrisen,
Infants as bricks for the taskmaster
Quota. Fruit and nuts ground
In wine to recall the mortar:

On the compass platter, traces
Of the species that devises
The Angel of Death to sail
Over our legible doorpost
Smeared with sacrifice.

—Robert Pinsky, from Gulf Music, (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2007)

Refuge Event

was them in motion
beside the open cart on steel wheels
drawn by a tawny mule in the
modern day having bartered
for cart and animal in
motion beside orchards
bordering the receding town
receding crows on the roof and a boy watching
them above his shovel in his pose
animal poked with a stick
between lurid exhalations and
a finch flicking itself at
gnats in the air
in motion and the crate or cart
mounded with leathers
tools from the workshop
drill press/lathe/iron forms/dyer’s vat
them bartering in syllables
anonymously in August
in wool coats and hats in the
documentary evidence in stiff polished
boots laced high and
unbroken-in
spring rain
had rutted the road
with a gap in motion
in eventual summer
axle needed mending
bucket needed washing
with the wash and the boiling water
(good-bye mother with her bag of wash)
in a surge of details past
slumbering countryside
in a past tense
wing or cargo hold

—Mark Levine, from The Wilds, (University of California Press, 2006)

In Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, new from Nextbook Press, poet and translator Peter Cole and essayist Adina Hoffman recount the history of the Cairo Geniza and the scholars who dedicated their professional (and sometimes private) lives to its holdings. Cole and Hoffman spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about how such a remarkable collection of documents came to exist, the many characters—from Schechter to a woman from the Middle Ages known as “Wuhsha the Broker”—associated with it, and what its contents reveal about historical celebrations of Passover. [Running time: 25:54.]

These and other issues form the basis of The Eichmann Trial, a new book by Emory University historian Deborah E. Lipstadt from Nextbook Press. Lipstadt is no stranger to the courtroom or to the perils of anti-Semitism. In 1996, she was sued by David Irving, who’d accused her of libeling him by calling him a Holocaust denier. Lipstadt won her case at trial in 2000. She joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about the importance of survivor testimony, about the controversy surrounding the 1961 trial, and about how her courtroom experience changed the way she thinks of Eichmann’s. [Running time: 21:26.]

But does it matter if a celebrity gets drunk and utters something offensive? Might it be counterproductive to call attention to every stupid remark? Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry asked Anti-Defamation League chief Abraham Foxman, Atlantic national correspondent and blogger Jeffrey Goldberg, New York magazine cultural critic Emily Nussbaum, and public-relations guru Matthew Hiltzik. [Running time: 16:05.]

Read an except from How the End Begins here.

Menken lived only 33 years, but in that time she had five husbands and a string of lovers, including the writer Alexandre Dumas and the poet Algernon Swinburne. She gambled, posed semi-nude, and made headlines across the country. And, as Michael and Barbara Foster reveal in their new biography, A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Loves, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menken, 1835-1868, America’s Original Superstar, she was also a committed Jew and frequently published poems and essays defending her people.

The Fosters join Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to speak about Adah Isaacs Menken’s political allegiances, her public liaisons, and her ethnic pride. [Running time: 17:14.]

Now Dinnerstein is releasing a new album, titled Bach: A Strange Beauty, on Sony Classical. The recording includes both solo and orchestral works, plus cover art by her father, renowned painter Simon Dinnerstein. Vox Tablet’s Sara Ivry visited Dinnerstein to talk about her journey to classical music stardom—from her art-centric childhood to her encounters with the Goldberg Variations while pregnant. [Running time: 18:27.]