Open Letter from Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman

Here are some of their excellent words:

To our fellow Jews, in the United States, in Israel, and around the world:

We know that, up to now, some of you have made an effort to reserve judgment on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. Some of you voted for him last November. Some of you have found employment in his service, or have involved yourself with him in private business deals, or in diplomatic ties.

...

The President has no filter, no self-control, you have told yourself. If he were an anti-Semite — a Nazi sympathizer, a friend of the Jew-hating Klan — we would know about it, by now. By now, he would surely have told us.

Yesterday, in a long and ragged off-the-cuff address to the press corps, President Trump told us. During a moment that white supremacist godfather Steve Bannon has apparently described as a “defining” one for this Administration, the President expressed admiration and sympathy for a group of white supremacist demonstrators who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, flaunting Swastikas and openly chanting, along with vile racist slogans, “Jews will not replace us!” Among those demonstrators, according to Trump, were “a lot” of “innocent” and “very fine people.”

So, now you know. First he went after immigrants, the poor, Muslims, trans people and people of color, and you did nothing. You contributed to his campaign, you voted for him. You accepted positions on his staff and his councils. You entered into negotiations, cut deals, made contracts with him and his government.

...

Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.

To our fellow Jews, in North America, in Israel, and around the world: What side are you on?

Read the rest here: 

AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR FELLOW JEWS

Michael Chabon (May 24, 1963)

--Michael Chabon on the Simpsons

"I saw my first golem in 1968, in Flushing, New York, shortly before my fifth birthday," Michael Chabon wrote in "Golems I Have Known...A Trickster's Memoir." The last sentence of this essay is: "And, naturally, I'm still telling lies." In the essay, Chabon describes his direct encounters with clay statues created by possibly practicing Kabbalists -- and also claims to be related to Rabbi Loewe of Prague, most famous golem creator. He also describes the progress of his awareness of both the Holocaust and the American civil rights struggle through his experiences with various people during his youth: these things are knit together in the memoir.

Chabon explains that a golem is among other things (and especially for modern or post-moderns) a metaphor for artistic and literary creation. Originally, the kabbalists made golems as an imitation of god's work creating Adam, also from clay. God animated the inert clay Adam; thus, the rabbis pretended or imitated him in the incantations they used over their statues. Of course the legends had it that they were sometimes successful, and the statues really came to life. After a childhood of encounters with golems, Chabon used the story of Rabbi Loewe and his golem in his Pulitzer-prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The Holocaust played a role in that book, as it did in the memoir.

I'm a big fan of Chabon. Besides Kavalier & Clay, I loved his book The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate, comic, ironic history of the Jews in the twentieth century where settlement in Alaska takes place instead of the Holocaust and the founding of Israel. His playful treatment of Jewish history and identity really appeals to me. I'm especially amused by the fact that the essay, which ends "I'm still telling lies" has been attacked for being false.

Bobby Fischer (March 9, 1943)

Chess once had enormous meaning to Jewish intellectuals in their efforts to become something new and different. At least to some of them – for example, recall the role of chess in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Bobby Fischer’s genius at chess was undoubtedly of great importance to this older generation of secular-Jewish chess fans.

The extremely troubled life of Bobby Fischer and his search for religion (and his other personal searches) took place at the same time that chess was becoming less and less interesting to a lot of people including Jews. I think they found new ways to be secular while applying their intelligence.

Here’s a personal note: during his radical years in St.Louis long before he met my mother, my father belonged to a cohort of various people including Bobby Fischer’s mother. He thought she was untrustworthy.

Another List

Jewcy.com just published "The 50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years" by Jason Diamond. The list begins with The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and continues pretty predictably with books by Proust, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, J.D.Salinger, Bellow, Ozick, Chabon... . Of course the first test when you read such a list: how many have you even heard of? And more important: how many have you read. I have read around half of the 50 books on the list, and heard of most of them, and I think it's pretty good, even the inclusion of Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. And Updike's Bech.

Is it really more than 100 years since Sholem Aleichem and I.L.Peretz published anything good? Maybe so. Am I the only person who doesn't find Henry Roth's Call it Sleep very readable? Maybe so.

Marc Tracy writing at Tablet magazine comments: "What is most interesting to me about [this list], ... Jason places a premium on how essential a work was to literature and culture at large rather than specifically to Jewish culture."

A Word on Golems in Science Fiction and other Fiction

I'm fascinated by the way the Jewish legend of the Golem has been adopted in modern literature, and in connection with Karel Capek's birthday today, I've put together a list of some of the works where golems of various sorts have appeared:

• Anthony, Piers: Golem in the Gears
• Borges, Jorge Luis: Dreamtigers
• Brin, David: Kiln People
• Chabon, Michael: Kavalier and Clay
• Davidson, Avram: “The Golem”
• Dick, Phillip: The Cosmic Puppets
• Hamill, Pete: Snow in August
• Handler, Daniel: Watch Your Mouth
• Isler, Alan: The Bacon Fancier
• Lem, Stanislav: The Golem
• Mieville, China: Iron Council
• Mulisch, Harry: The Procedure
• Piercy, Marge: He, She, and It
• Pratchett, Terry: Feet of Clay
• Rosenbaum, Thane: The Golems of Gotham
• Stroud, Jonathan: The Golem’s Eye
• Sturm, James: The Golem’s Mighty Swing

Other, more obscure books with "Golem" in the title appear in a keyword search at ABE books, and other places. I have read some of these, and plan to read more, out of curiosity about how this legend has fit so well into a modern genre, and in fact how it fictionally prefigured a whole area of modern technology.