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Friends Like These

Today on Tablet

by
Stephanie Butnick
August 11, 2011

Today in Tablet Magazine, Michael Orbach sheds light on the troubling factors which have allowed Avrohom Mondrowitz, an accused serial pedophile from the Orthodox community, to avoid extradition from Israel (where he fled from Brooklyn in 1985 after being indicted on eight counts of child abuse and five counts of sodomy) and never face trial.

Allison Hoffman watches Lifetime’s new Brighton Beach reality show, Russian Dolls, in which the Russian-Jewish characters are never explicitly identified—or, rather, never identify themselves—as being Jewish. What Russian Dolls confirms,” Hoffman explains, “is that, 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its Jewish exiles have found in America a place where they can finally live freely as Russians.”

Morris Dickstein examines the 1937 short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” published by the young poet Delmore Schwartz, who relied on his family’s Jewish history to artistically explore his own identity.

On Long Story Short, Liel Leibovitz discusses Schwartz’s later depression, alcoholism, and precipitous fall with Dickstein.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.