Nathanael West (October 17, 1903)

"In West, Jewishness is subtext or invisible." * Critics dispute the Jewishness of various themes and characters in West's novels (except for the antisemitic portrayals he sometimes produced). He changed his name and hid his Russian-Jewish immigrant background.

Miss Lonelyhearts is a novel about the writer of a newspaper advice column. The Day of the Locust is about Hollywood and the movie industry. To find a Jewish consciousness in West, some critics point out that Jews were involved in writing advice columns (Abraham Cahan's Bintel Brief...) and in running Hollywood. This is the kind of overinterpretation that I think of as wishful thinking.

I enjoyed these novels. However, I'm interested in the potential influence of his background on West even if he reacted by changing his name and becoming an antisemite. He's claimed as an American Jewish writer. I'm not sure what that means in his case.

Ralph Lauren (October 14, 1939)

When I feel like splurging on clothes, Lauren is my favorite brand. It’s a commonplace that Bronx-born Ralph Liftshitz morphed into the high priest of aging preppy fashion, and lots of serious fashion commentators like to speculate about how being Jewish specifically positioned him to get into the mind of American women who want to look classy (or whatever it is they want). I don't take that very seriously. I think attributing Jewish motives to every success is an exaggeration. I just like the clothes.

Of course his high-end fashion is not what I'm talking about:


-- image from current Ralph Lauren web magazine.

Sacha Baron Cohen (October 13, 1971)

“In a rare interview as himself (and not one of his characters) Sacha told NPR’s Terry Gross that he didn’t believe that the people Borat encountered agreed with his racist statements just to be polite, and even if that was their motivation, he was concerned."

Sacha Baron Cohen's travesties of racists from many countries have fooled Americans into making some amazingly racist statements, and his many assumed characters made him a popular comedian on TV a few years ago. He has a quite serious side as well, reflected in his work:

“‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference,’ Sacha, a Cambridge University history graduate said, quoting British historian Ian Kershaw. 'It’s that indifference that’s quite dangerous.'

"Sacha, through his satirical characters, and Erran [Baron Cohen], through his musical fusion, are pushing back against prejudice, which has played a powerful role shaping Baron Cohen family history. The two brothers are members of the fourth generation of Baron Cohens, which also includes their first cousins Ash, a Hollywood director of small-budget independent films such as Bang and This Girl’s Life, and Simon, a prominent Cambridge psychologist promulgating controversial theories about sex differences and the brain.” *

Lenny Bruce (October 13, 1925)

Censored! That was Lenny Bruce. His shocking language had an impact that is unimaginable in the current world where the bleeps on TV don’t even disguise which taboo word is coming out of the mouth of the speaker. Even if Lenny Bruce hadn't attacked public prudery, I doubt if the rigorous avoidance of this vocabulary would have survived. However, he seems to be widely acknowledged as the originator of blue blue monologues in respectable public arenas.

One of Lenny Bruce's memorable stand-up comedy routines was titled "Jewish and Goyish." Way ahead of Woody Allen he said:

Kool Aid is Goyish. Evaporated milk is Goyish, even if Jews invented it. All Drake's Cakes are Goyish. Chocolate is Jewish and fudge is Goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish, and, as you know, white bread is very Goyish. Instant potatoes - Goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime jello is Goyish. Lime soda is very Goyish.

If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't even matter if you're Catholic; if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you are Jewish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them. The Jack Paar Show is very Goyish.

What is Jewish Art?

In today's Tablet magazine -- "Seeing Double: A Jewish literature is easy to identify. But defining Jewish art is a task of Talmudic complexity, as a new book, Jewish Art, makes clear," a review by Adam Kirsch. The article includes a summary of some of the earlier writers who dealt with the question of what could or should make an artist "Jewish." Was it subject matter? The artist's personal history? And in some sense, did the designation suggest some hint of lack or respect for the artist as an artist?

Imagery and stereotypes about Jews are one focus of Jewish Art, written by Samantha Baskind and Larry Silver. Kirsch discusses, for example, the book's treatment of the use of Christian imagery in the World-War-II era paintings by Chagall, such as the one above.

Kirsch wrote: "For many 19th-century thinkers, the principle that Judaism was incapable of, or hostile to, visual beauty was taken for granted. In his passionately revisionist study The Artless Jew, Kalman P. Bland shows that this belief was shared by Gentiles hostile to Judaism, including Hegel and Wagner, as well as by Jews like Freud and Rosenzweig."

I found the ideas here thought-provoking, especially the discussion of the numerous abstract expressionist artists of Jewish origin. Kirsch wrote:"Perhaps, then, we would better off talking not about Jewish art, but about a Jewish way of seeing and talking and writing about art—one that situates paintings in a universe of Jewish discourse about the power and danger of the image. This concept restores primacy, in what feels like an authentically Jewish way, to the word and the interpreter, rather than leaving it with the image."

Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884)

As this Israeli stamp says, Eleanor Roosevelt was a defender of human rights. She was often ahead of her husband in championing badly-treated groups, especially Blacks, when they really needed respect and recognition from national leaders.

A review of a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt points out that early in her life, she was antisemitic, in keeping with her upper-class American background. She gradually changed her attitudes, as she did towards many minorities:

"By the time of the New Deal, she was coming around, risking criticism to meet with Jewish groups, supporting an array of Jewish causes and writing articles urging tolerance. 'It is the secret fear that the Jewish people are stronger or more able than those who still wield superior physical power over them, which brings about oppression,' she wrote in Liberty magazine. 'I believe that those nations which do not persecute are saved only by confidence in themselves and a feeling that they can still defend themselves and their own place in the world. Therefore, I am forced to the conclusion that the Jewish people though they may be in part responsible for the present situation are not as responsible as the other races who need to examine themselves and grapple with their own fears.'''

Harold Pinter (October 10, 1930)

Pinter, an English playwright and Nobel laureate, had Jewish parents, but like many English Jews, did not retain a public Jewish identity. According to Jewish Virtual Library, Joshua Cohen of Forward said, “Pinter is too much of a Modern to define himself as a Jew,” and that he “has downplayed his Judaism many times in conversation, and has consciously ignored it in his characterizations.” In what I see as an excess of pride, some Jewish critics have tried to assign Jewish sensibilities or motives to Pinter's writings. I am not convinced.

Pinter, sad to say, was not the only successful English Jewish intellectual to attack Israel and to assume as his own the left-wing attacks on Zionism and the defense of all Palestinians no matter what they did. I can only think about the caricature of this type of person in Howard Jacobson's book The Finkler Question.

Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963)

The hideous execution of Daniel Pearl by Islamic extremists in February, 2002, is unforgettable. His affirmation of his Jewish identity just before the executioner acted makes him a tragic hero.

Alfred Dreyfus (October 9, 1859)

Alfred Dreyfus is an important figure in modern Jewish history, but he's actually more of a victim than a hero. The Dreyfus Affair, as the event came to be called, divided late-19th century Republican France. Someone had been passing military secrets from the French to the Germans, and one officer with access to the documents, Dreyfus, came under suspicion because he was a Jew. The evidence against him was dubious, but his race was enough to convict him. This was the era when hatred of Jews was a political position, with every effort on the part of the haters to make anti-Semitism respectable -- in fact, they had coined the term itself to justify their beliefs.

After Dreyfus was convicted and sent to Devil's Island, evidence against another officer came to light. A major cover-up followed this discovery, including falsification of documents and widespread conspiracy to change facts and create contradictory evidence. The guilty man, Esterhazy, was the perfect opposite of Dreyfus. His family were old European nobility, he was politically right wing, and he appealed to the anti-Semites. His trial was politically charged; after five minutes of deliberation, the judges declared him innocent, and crowds in the streets cried "Long live the Army!" "Long live France!" and "Death to the Jews!"

I wrote much more about the Dreyfus affair in connection with Emile Zola.

Yom Kippur (October 8, 2011)

Secular Jews at various times have handled Jewish holidays in various ways. 100 years ago, secular Jews of some persuasions in New York and Warsaw had Yom Kippur parties where they ate and drank, and where they especially ate not-kosher foods, as in the headline above from 1898. They sent a message to the others, didn't they?

Says Eddy Portnoy in Tablet magazine:

"What does one do, after all, when prayers and traditional customs no longer hold any meaning yet you still want to be part of a Jewish community? Eating with intention on a fast day allows you, in one fell swoop, to thumb your nose at the religious establishment and create a secular Jewish identity."

In Israel today, the whole country has shut down, without much push-back from the non-religious as far as I can tell. Said Haaretz yesterday: "Public opinion surveys over the past few years show most Jews in Israel observe Yom Kippur. A survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2009 found 26 percent of Israeli Jews who describe themselves as 'secular' or 'not religious' fast on Yom Kippur and 24 percent of them have attended prayers at a synagogue."

As for me: I'm aware today that it's Yom Kippur. I am not doing anything that I wouldn't do anyway. I neither purposely violate the spirit of the holiday nor do I do anything to uphold it. There have been years when I wasn't even aware of the holiday, and years when I was invited to "break the fast" dinners which I attended even though I wasn't fasting. I maintain a neutral attitude, I guess. You?

Diane Ackerman (October 7, 1948)

I enjoyed Diane Ackerman's World War II story of two quiet heros and how they used the Warsaw Zoo as a hiding place for Jewish and other refugees.

She recently wrote a very nice article for the New York Times about recent astronomical observations: Planets in the Sky with Diamonds. She said: "The past month has been a marvel in the planetary world. In addition to HD 85512b [an Earth-like planet that might harbor life], astronomers spotted a planet that may be fashioned entirely of diamond, a brilliant diadem set in the black velvet of space. For all we know, it has baguette moons in tow. And a few weeks later, planet hunters confirmed the discovery of Kepler-16b, a planet that circles two suns in the constellation Cygnus."

Marjorie Guthrie ( October 6, 1917)

By her own description, you might know Marjorie Guthrie as Woody Guthrie’s wife or as Arlo Guthrie’s mother – depending on your age. I've heard that she taught Woody some Yiddish folk songs, and I've always wanted to hear him sing them, but I don't know if any recordings are available.

Marjorie was a dancer with the Martha Graham company, using the stage name Marjorie Mazia. After Woody’s death Marjorie became an advocate for medical research on chronic disabling illnesses such as the one that had taken his life.

Her mother was a Yiddish poet, Aliza Waitzman Greenblatt, and she donated her mother's papers and important books to the National Yiddish Book Center.

Gertrude Berg (October 3, 1898)

Gertrude Berg created, wrote, and starred in a weekly situation comedy, The Goldbergs. First on radio, then TV, she acted Molly Goldberg, a Jewish-American mother. If all the stereotypes of the Jewish mother transferred to secular Jews, we have Molly Goldberg to thank. Thanks.

Mahatma Gandhi (October 2, 1869)

How can Gandhi be anything but a hero? No matter what he specifically said about Jews and Hitler, or no matter how perverse antisemites might turn his thought or methods to unfortunate ends.

Walter Matthau ( October 1, 1920)

I have enjoyed a number of movies starring Walter Matthau, and admired him for the wide variety of roles he played, while as far as I know not playing himself (as many actors do). While he sometimes played Jewish characters -- including Albert Einstein -- his repertoire wasn't limited by his ethnicity. My favorite of his films is "Hopscotch."

As far as I know, he was in fact religiously observant, and outspoken against antisemites like Vanessa Redgrave when she denigrated Israel. I find him admirable.

Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928)

"Only those who were there know what it was like. We must bear witness. Silence is not an option."

"Not in the Heavens"

I mentioned recently that I have been reading historical and theoretical treatments of secular Judaism. One recent book -- published this year -- is David Biale, Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought.

Biale’s book is a historical and social study of Jews who rejected Judaism, who engaged with Jewish ideas “if for no other reason than to reject them.” He chose such individuals throughout history who made a contribution to a more universal culture. His view is that these secular Jews were “able to create their original theories because they stood at a conscious distance from the conventions of society.” The distance came both from their Jewish background and from their chosen ideas. (p. xii - xiii)

For Biale, secular universalism becomes a Jewish identity. Historically, Jews made a distinction between that which is holy and that which is for every-day use, while Christians contrasted a holy world beyond their lives to a secular world in which they lived. This colored the development of secular Jewish thought, leaving a different space for secularism than their Christian counterparts experienced. Biale explicitly contrasts his view with that of Isaac Deutscher in “The Non-Jewish Jew.”

Modern secular Judaism has roots in thinkers who were reacting to medievalism, especially Maimonides and Spinoza. Biale explores each of their contributions, and continues by explaining how Enlightenment and 19^th century thinkers reacted to them and incorporated their ideas. Two main examples: Moses Mendelssohn and Heinrich Heine. In particular, Heine’s writings on the Jews “constitute the first coherent statement of Jewish secularism in a language that clearly resonated with his contemporaries.” (p. 36)

Biale discusses many of the important secular Jewish intellectuals of the early 20^th century. He describes various secular Jewish accomplishments and trends: the beginnings of secular Zionism, writers like Kafka, and other thinkers. Freud, he says recognized Spinoza as a “founder of the congregation of unbelievers.” Einstein specifically studied Spinoza. Not brought up in a religious home, he constructed his own secular Jewish identity, and said he believed in “Spinoza’s God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world.” (p. 42)

Secular views and interpretations of the Torah and the Bible are the subject of one chapter of Biale’s book. Abraham Ibn Ezra and other medieval interpreters were at times secular in their approach. In the recent past, the Zionists, including Ben Gurion, created their own interpretations.

Nineteenth-century theories about race influenced both Zionists and other secular Jews. These made an important contribution to their views of Jewish identity. Zangwill and Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky are two examples. Jabotinsky, “founder of right-wing Revisionist Zionism,” also borrowed from other popular European theories such as positivism and social Darwinism, creating the idea of Jews as a race and a nation, not so much a religious group. (p. 92)

Languages also played a role in secular Jewish thought of that era. Not only the well-known question -- Hebrew or Yiddish? – but more nuanced ideas also emerged. Zamenhof, inventor of Esperanto, wrote a work on Yiddish linguistics – and created the ultimate in a universalist language. (p. 137)

One interesting figure that Biale often invokes is Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg, 1856-1927) – sometimes called the ‘secular rabbi’ of Zionism. He was “the idealogical leader of ‘cultural Zionism,’ the strand of Jewish nationalism that saw in Zionism primarily a movement of cultural renewal rooted in a spiritual center in Palestine. …, Ahad Ha’am sought a nonreligious foundation for the Jewish national spirit.” Perhaps “the most important theoretician of secular Jewish culture,” he was also the first Zionist of importance to emphasize the darker side of the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Turkish Palestine.” (pp. 40 & 82)

Wrapping up the threads of his many and fascinating chapters, Biale provides an interesting observation about creative American Jewish secularists: the way that they often use the Kaddish as a theme in their works, in particular poets Charles Reznikoff and Allen Ginsberg and composer Leonard Bernstein. He says “since a secular culture may not provide the tools with which to confront death … even the most secular Jews turn to this quintessential expression or religious tradition to mine its historical associations for nonreligious ends.” (p. 189)

Finally, Biale mentions the “explosion of interest in academic Jewish studies” in recent years, with offerings at most major universities. The postmodern definition is that everyone is a “Jew by choice” and also most American Jews are secular, with a fluid identity not limited to their Jewishness. The categories of religious and secular are no longer fixed as they may have been in the past. (p. 190-191)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (September 27, 1966)

From the official biography of Congressional Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, representing the 20th District of Florida since 2005:

"The first Jewish Congresswoman ever elected from Florida, Rep. Wasserman Schultz, introduced a resolution, which passed the House of Representatives and called on the President to declare an annual Jewish American Heritage Month. The President subsequently did so, with the inaugural month in May, 2006. Since then, Presidents have proclaimed Jewish American Heritage Month annually." -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Biography

George Gershwin (September 26, 1898)

Details about the enormous amount of popular and now-classical music by Gershwin are so well known I hardly need to provide them. Who can't hum the tunes from Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, or Fascinatin' Rhythm?

The Jewishness of George and Ira Gershwin, children of immigrants to New York, is widely known and always included in their biographies, but I've actually found nothing indicating that they recognized direct Jewish influence or inspiration for their music. There's a lot of speculation -- does the start of Rhapsody in Blue or the wailing note of Summertime reflect a Jewish musical echo? But no hard evidence.

I found one indication that George Gershwin was conscious of a Jewish identity. Here's a quote from a letter he wrote in 1936: "Of course, there are depressing moments too, when talk of Hitler and his gang creep into the conversation. For some reason or other the feeling out here [in California] is even more acute than in the East." -- from Jewish Theater.

Louise Nevelson ( September 23, 1900)

Louise Nevelson was a prominent sculptor and a leader in several areas of modern art. She was an innovator in the field of assemblage.

Nevelson, who was born in a shtetl near Kiev, was brought up in a Yiddish-speaking traditional Jewish family. They had immigrated in 1905, and settled in Maine.

As a young adult, Nevelson moved to New York. Her life there initially was not as an artist but as a society matron, wife of a rich businessman. However her marriage failed and she turned to art and a bohemian lifestyle. She developed her own spiritual philosophy, studied with several well-known modern artists in New York and Munich, worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera, and began to exhibit her sculpture in 1935. Like many artists of that era, she worked for the WPA.

In the 1950s and later, Nevelson became well-known as she developed her technique as a maker of assemblages -- a medium that received its name in 1961. The characteristics of this style:

"Assemblage transforms non-art objects and materials into sculptures of all sizes and persuasions. Its limitless range and evocative use of materials distinguish it from traditional fine-art sculpture. The very fragility of its materials, which in some instances only precariously endure, defies the notion of art's timelessness. Its rejection of craftsmanship completely redefines the status of the artist. In their desire to abandon permanence and dispense with chisels and awls, artists such as Joseph Beuys, Louise Nevelson, Bruce Conner, Arman, and Louise Bourgeois composed pieces that address change and chance and that appeal to the senses. ... The nonrepresentational work of Louise Nevelson stockpiles mostly wooden objects into abstract, monochromatic pieces that are unexpectedly sensuous."

In interviews after she became famous, Nevelson was reticent about her Jewish background:

"Nevelson was typically willing to weave any intriguing material into her personal myth, but she was notably reticent on the subject of her Jewish heritage. When questioned in interviews on this topic she replied that it was too personal to discuss. The spirituality of Louise Nevelson’s work might best be understood by considering her repeated emphasis on a search for harmony.

"Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan commissioned Nevelson to design entirely the interior for their Chapel of the Good Shepherd. ... When asked about designing a Christian chapel as a Jew, Nevelson replied, 'To me there is no distinction between a church and a synagogue. If you go deep enough into any religion you arrive at the same point of harmony.'”

Sources (and for further details): Jewish Women's Archive and Art + Culture.

Ethan Coen (September 21, 1957)

The Coen Brothers: Joel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Coen (born September 21, 1957) have made some pretty spectacular movies. Ethan at Princeton University wrote a senior thesis entitled: "Two Views of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy" as I wrote last November for his brother's birthday.

Here's some material about their film “A Serious Man” about Larry Gopnik a Jewish physics professor (enough to make them heroic right there) --

Larry consults with three rabbis ... One offers him a bizarrely hilarious story about a gentile with mysterious engravings on the inside of his teeth. This is about as helpful as the ersatz folk tale (in subtitled Yiddish) that the Coens have devised as a prologue, wherein an old woman in a shtetl stabs a rabbi she has decided is possessed by a dybbuk (the soul of a dead person).

Though the Coens flirt with caricature, there are some serious questions about faith and Judaism underlying their sadistic fun. The film conveys a vivid sense of time and place, and much of the excellently chosen cast are semi-professional locals recruited from the filming locations in Minnesota. -- From a New York Post review

I am going to have to see this film!

Two Books on Secular Judaism

I have been reading two books on the history and philosophy of secular Judaism. One, David Biale's Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought, is a recent scholarly history of ideas, exploring many traditions within Judaism and outside the religion but within the Jewish people. I will have more to say about it later.

The other is a much more personal set of essays by Isaac Deutscher: The Non-Jewish Jew and other essays (published 1968). Deutscher was a committed Marxist, best known for his 3 volume biography of Leon Trotsky. Understanding his exact stand on Soviet history and the details of the rivalries and philosophies of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky is outside my area of interest, though knowing his bias is very important for understanding his point of view. A review of a reissue of the biography put it this way "In Deutscher’s time, it seemed incontrovertible that the most significant event in the 20th century was the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Now it is highly controvertible." *

In The Non-Jewish Jew Deutscher tackles the question of Jewish identity after the Holocaust. The tragic reversion to antisemitism in its rawest form had made universalism -- the pre-war position of many intellectuals, especially Marxists -- irrelevant or worse. In these essays (originally published in various journals, and collected posthumously) Deutscher tries to come to terms with his universalist ideals in the light of reality, and in the later ones, to understand postwar events in Russia and the development of the state of Israel.

Deutscher felt that for him, the Jewish community was “only negative.” To consider himself racially Jewish, he thought, would be a victory for Hitler. He summarized his identity thus:

“If it is not race, what then makes a Jew? Religion? I am an atheist. Jewish nationalism? I am an internationalist. In neither sense, am I, therefore, a Jew. I am, however, a Jew by force of unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated. I am a Jew because I feel the Jewish tragedy as my tragedy; because I feel the pulse of Jewish history; because I should like to do all I can to assure the real, not supurious, security and self-respect of the Jews.” (p. 51)

I have never been a Marxist or a socialist, but I feel the conflict between universalist hopes and the realities of the modern world -- which hasn't become any more promising that way in the years since Deutscher wrote. I find his formulation very interesting, and in many ways I think he could sense the future when he was writing half a century ago. The world that was imagined then by thinkers from many philosophic and political perspectives never happened.

Maybe it seems silly, but here's a summary of what I can't imagine:

"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace" -- John Lennon

Steven Pinker (September 18, 1954)

Pinker identifies himself as a firmly committed secular Jew. I have enjoyed at least 5 of his books on language and on the workings of the human mind. His next book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, to be published at the beginning of October. My only decision: do I buy it in hardcover or Kindle edition?

Lauren Bacall (September 16, 1924)

Lauren Bacall's studio biography glossed over her roots as the child of New York Jewish immigrants. She raised her children as Episcopalians. Nothing about her long acting career is Jewish. It's a stretch to see her as a secular Jew or any other kind. But what a wonderful actress!

Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898)

Ben Shahn was a Socialist Realist painter. He was born in Lithuania and grew up in New York; he learned the craft of lithography through an apprenticeship, and later through formal academic study. He worked on public art during the Depression, and was active in political and social campaigns throughout his life. Some of the causes that Shahn supported: justice for Sacco and Vanzetti, freedom for trade union leader Tom Mooney, opposition to antisemitism, support of America's participation in World War II through the Office of War Information and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), anti-poverty efforts, and much later, anti-atomic testing activism.


Of this work, titled “Boy” and dated 1944 (owned by the University of Michigan Museum of Art) the label says Shahn “created images such as Boy that conveyed the brutality of the war and the Holocaust, often depicting children and other innocent victims. … Shahn, who often combined historical images with his personal childhood memories, sought to universalize Jewish suffering. He said that his work did not attempt to create an image of a specific event, but rather conveyed ‘the emotional tone that surrounds disaster; what you might call the inner disaster.’”

Update: another painting by Ben Shahn, "Bookshop: Hebrew Books, Holy Day Books" from the Detroit Institute of Arts:

Jared Diamond (September 10, 1937)

Jared Diamond's most famous book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, is a masterpiece, and I've read it several times; I've read some of his other books as well, and attended some lectures he gave in Ann Arbor several years ago. All in all, I wouldn't identify anything particularly Jewish about the things he says about himself or about his works, and I wasn't even aware of his religion when I read them.

I did learn that in Diamond's Natural History article titled "Who Are the Jews" he acknowledges his Jewish identity. The article begins with a mention of his first trip to Israel, and of his immigrant Eastern European Jewish grandparents, who left Europe for America during the great migration that took place around 100 years ago. He then explores genetic and other scientific evidence about whether Jews are a coherent group.

"Who Are the Jews?" Natural History 102:11 (November 1993): 12-19

Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941)

For years we subscribed to Natural History so that we could read Stephen Jay Gould's column about new discoveries in evolution and effective ways to struggle against the monkeys who wanted to teach and legislate creationism (or whatever they called it that year). His books and writings educated us and many others about developments in this science, and also about the challenges of coping with anti-scientific thought as it was emerging in America. Since Gould died in 2002, the situation has only grown worse -- the anti-science and anti-intellectual tone of national politics is deplorable, as documented by the current New York Times column by Paul Krugman, "Republicans Against Science" and in many other places.

Gould's scientific and personal values and accomplishments didn't depend on his own religious background -- though indeed it was secular and Jewish. Gould was proud that his Jewish ancestors had escaped tyranny to come to the United States, and conscious of a variety of ironies. For example, in his book The Mismeasure of Man he attacked IQ tests – his attack seems to have been “illuminated by the knowledge that the most popular early use of I.Q. tests had been to think up ways to keep out people like Gould's Jewish immigrant grandparents.”

A collection of obituaries for Gould indicate that he was a purely secular Jew. And a hero!

New Book: "Yiddishkeit"

Yiddishkeit by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle, published last week, is a mixed bag of short vignettes about Yiddish authors; one-page summaries of various historic trends (especially political activism and persecution of left-wingers); graphic-novel treatments of the lives of movie script writers, actors, and other entertainment figures; and one full-length play containing excerpts from many Yiddish theater works.

The visual treatment of literary and biographical topics in Yiddishkeit is fun, but very truncated: for example, it offers a 3-page summary of Aaron Lansky’s memoir Outwitting History, (and by the way, I think Lansky's treatment of Yiddish in America in Outwitting History is better and more comprehensive) and a 12-page “retelling” in graphic form of the 1937 Yiddish movie “Greenfields.” And more.

Needless to say, it has quite a few things to say about Yiddish having been a secular language, but now having become the everyday language of the religious Chassids, and of few others. Although many of the writers, performers, and political figures that appear in the book were indeed secular Jews, I was a bit disappointed that among other ideas, this wasn't particularly well fleshed-out in the vignettes. All in all, the book tried to do much more than would be possible in such a short treatment, and didn't live up to what it promised.

The introductory narratives in this book suggests that it is some type of comprehensive treatment of Yiddish culture – Yiddishkeit – in America. It implies that there will be material about the exceptionality of Yiddish as a language, though I don’t think that’s really achieved. And while it covers a lot of other cultural material, it also misses some very big topics, and I think it misses them with a bias.

Would you be surprised if I thought it was biased against women? That it missed the presence of Yiddish-speaking Jews and Yiddish culture outside of New York and Hollywood? That it skipped over the existence of scholars of Yiddish language and culture prior to the current academic version of Yiddish studies? In other words, it has a very limited view of the subject.

Here are some of the topics that might make a more complete story of Yiddishkeit that are dismissed, glossed over, or not there at all:

• Food. I’m sure there’s a mention of a New York deli somewhere, but here’s one example of how this doesn’t exactly deal with the food of the Yiddish speakers in America – no mention of the adoption of the bagel by the American mainstream. I wish it had a graphic bio of Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s Deli!
• Social Work. The political activist Yiddishists are reasonably well-covered but the way that Jews trying to help the poor immigrants to assimilate and in the process inventing the modern field of social work doesn’t appear. A graphic treatment of the Settlement Cookbook would be welcome here. But in this world, women don’t count, I fear, unless they are minor writers or actors.
• Organizations of immigrants from specific communities (Landsmanshaften). These receive a passing mention, but don’t do justice to them. How about a graphic treatment showing how they were critical in the process of transmitting Yiddish culture from immigrants to their families.
• The Forward and Abraham Cahan. Sure the Forward is mentioned, but its importance is dismissed. For example, Hershl Hartman is listed as “the first native-born Yiddish journalist” (p. p.229) and his work is more than half a century after that of native-speaker Cahan and others writing in either or both languages. If the real issue is what Yiddishkeit gave to American culture, a description of the influence of the “Bintel Brief” – the Forward’s advice column – would be in order.
• English-language novels about Yiddishkeit. Cahan also wrote very important novels about Yiddish-speaking immigrants – in English. Several other writers also did, but there’s little or nothing about them. Much more about the European Yiddish novelists, and lots of attacks on I.B.Singer.
• YIVO. Scholarly Yiddish study and attempt to document the language began in Vilna and moved to New York when hounded out of Europe. A bit more detail on this important institution -- mentioned only in passing in the book -- would fill out the story.

I’m no scholar at all. I can’t imagine how many more topics would be needed to deserve the claims this book makes about its achievement.

Note: I posted some of this little review on the Yiddishkeit page at amazon.com.

Michael Shermer (September 8, 1954)

Michael Shermer is the founder of the Skeptics Society and a columnist for Scientific American. Like Stephen Jay Gould, whose birthday is coming up, and like many other writers, I feel that his attitude of questioning and critiquing folly is compatible with what I feel are Jewish values. Shermer has absolutely no Jewish background at all, but I still think he's a hero to secular Jews because of these values.

Here is a paragraph from one of his recent columns that illustrates what he has to say:

"... dependency on belief and its host of psychological biases is why, in science, we have built-in self-correcting machinery. Strict double-blind controls are required, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the conditions during data collection. Collaboration with colleagues is vital. Results are vetted at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research is replicated in other laboratories. Disconfirming evidence and contradictory interpretations of data are included in the analysis. If you don’t seek data and arguments against your theory, someone else will, usually with great glee and in a public forum. This is why skepticism is a sine qua non of science, the only escape we have from the belief-dependent realism trap created by our believing brains."

Bernie Sanders (September 8, 1941)

Bernie Sanders is an independent US senator from Vermont; he also served several terms in the House of Representatives. He is the first senator ever to call himself a socialist, and his views on almost all subjects are exceptionally liberal in today's right-leaning political climate. He has worked on bills aimed at the causes of global warming and on other positive energy and resource bills, has supported health care laws, and has come down on what I think of as the right side of many issues. He is independent, but caucauses with the Democrats.

His website says of him:

The Almanac of American Politics has called Sanders a "practical" and "successful legislator." He has focused on the shrinking middle class and widening income gap in America that is greater than at any time since the Great Depression. Other priorities include reversing global warming, universal health care, fair trade policies, supporting veterans and preserving family farms. He serves on five Senate committees: Budget; Veterans; Energy; Environment; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Sanders would be a secular Jewish hero even if he were not a secular Jew, but that in fact seems to identify his religious position.

Sid Caesar (September 8, 1922)

The "professor" with a Yiddish accent loves shrimp!

Moses Mendelssohn (September 6, 1729)

Moses Mendelssohn never gave up being an observant and religious Jew. He lived and worked in Berlin, where Jews could live only with explicit permission, and where Jews emphatically did not have equal rights with Christians. He received the admiration of Christian philosophers and writers of his time, which was an extraordinary accomplishment.

Mendelssohn's writings encouraged Jews to take a much broader look at themselves and their religious beliefs. Somehow, therefore, Mendelssohn is held responsible for a philosophy that led other Jews to adopt a much more secular life. I think he gets a lot of blame for things he wasn't responsible for. Prejudice and outright discrimination against Jews continued in Germany after his death, so Jews who listened to him often converted to Christianity to escape bigotry and to be allowed to pursue intellectual jobs. Two famous converts of the following generation: his own son, who became the father of composer Felix Mendelssohn, and the poet and writer Heinrich Heine. There were many others. It seems to me that the way that German Jews coped with a difficult situation in the 19th century is no fault of Mendelssohn, but historians vary in the way they handle this.

Another development that took place after Mendelssohn's death was Reform Judaism. I am unsure about the exact progression of influence from his thought to the thought of the reformers. I'm also not convinced at all that Jewish efforts to assimilate into German life, where they were demonstrably unwelcome despite many success stories, was a plausible cause of the Holocaust. When I say it that way, it seems preposterous that anyone accuses Mendelssohn and other Jews of causing violent antisemitic behavior in subsequent centuries, but some people have indeed made that argument.

Giacomo Meyerbeer (September 5, 1791)

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a successful composer in the 19th century. He helped Richard Wagner, who then turned on him because Meyerbeer was Jewish, and succeeded in causing a loss of respect for his mentor. Meyerbeer's works have recently been restored to the classical repertory after a resulting century and a half of neglect.

Darius Milhaud (September 4, 1892)

Milhaud was a prolific composer, including a wide variety of works influenced by many traditions including modernist French music (he was a member of Les Six), jazz, the music of Brazil, and the music of other composers such as Stravinsky. Among these traditions: his roots in the Jewish communities of the south of France – he was born in Aix-en-Provence. Milhaud described himself as “a Frenchman from Provence, and by religion, a Jew.”

Among Millaud’s hundreds of compositions, many have Jewish material or Jewish music, including music from Eastern Europe, and from his own French background. His opera titled "Esther of Carpentras" (which I’ve never heard) has as its subject the celebration of Purim by the very old Jewish community of Carpentras, a small town near his birthplace. One theme of this opera is tolerance, which is significant as it was first performed in 1938, two years before Milhaud fled to the United States to escape the Nazis.

For a fuller biography see this

The First Jews in America

In early September of 1654, twenty-three Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution in Portuguese colonies in South America or the Caribbean arrived in New Amsterdam on the ship St. Catherine. These men, women, and children made up the first Jewish group immigration to North America, although individuals had lived in earlier colonial towns including Roanoke, N.C., New England, and even New Amsterdam. The two Jewish individuals already there were Jacob Barsimson, an Askenazi trader, and Solomon Pieters or Petersen.

The arrival of this group is celebrated as the beginning of actual Jewish communal life in the future USA, as well as the beginning of Jewish enjoyment of the new tolerance that came to characterize the New World. Despite the efforts of Governor Peter Stuyvesant to expel them, they overcame prejudice and formed a lasting community.

Tablet Magazine recently wrote about the surviving cemeteries from the congregation founded shortly after their arrival. " From 1654 until 1825, Shearith Israel was the only Jewish congregation in New York City. In its long history, membership of the congregation has included Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, three founders of the New York Stock Exchange, and the poet Emma Lazarus, whose famous words from 'The New Colossus' are affixed to the Statue of Liberty."

The freedom to be a secular Jew is very important to me, and I see its roots in these early Jewish migrations.

References here and here.

Alan Dershowitz (September 1, 1938)

For around 50 years, Alan Dershowitz has been reminding Jews in America not to be too confident, too trusting, or too optimistic. I used to feel that he was pushing for a view that was too paranoid about antisemitism in our society. I think he's right way too often these days.

I agree with Dershowitz about a number of very important issues such as the ACLU defense of Muslim students at UC Irvine who tried to shut down a speech by the Israeli ambassador, the way Yale discontinued Holocaust studies, and the growth of antisemitic rhetoric on campuses. For example, he points out why the ACLU leaders are defending individuals who openly said they opposed free speech for supporters of Israel: "These leaders don't like Israel and they support the censorship of pro-Israel views. They would never take the same position if the shoe had been on the other foot: If the speaker were from Hamas and the students trying to shut him down were pro-Israel."

He recently discussed Glen Beck's visit to Israel; he says:

"At a time when old friends and allies who should be supporting the Jewish state are abandoning it in droves, Beck's willingness to stand up for Israel must be accepted with gratitude. I, for one, do not question his motives. I believe they are genuine. One need not accept all of Beck's positions on Israel -- and I certainly do not -- in order to agree with him that support of Israel is one of the great moral issues of the 21st Century.

"Those who thoughtlessly attack Israel no matter what it does and thoughtlessly defend Israel's enemies regardless of what they do, are making peace far more difficult. They incentivize terrorism by Israel's enemies and disincentivize compromise on all sides."

Dershowitz has led an interesting life, beginning as an orthodox Jew whose choice of covering his head and refusing non-kosher food were shocking when he first became a law professor at Harvard. More recently he's transitioned to being closer to a secular Jew, though I don't know his exact religious practices now. As I say, he used to seem paranoid but now I think he's right.

Itzhak Perlman (August 31, 1945)

Charles Reznikoff (August 30, 1894)

Reznikoff is a very obscure poet whose works I ought to read (except I never read poetry).

I recently read this about his work Holocaust:

"Published just a year before his death in 1976, Holocaust was Reznikoff's last book. It, too, draws on court records, this time The Trials of the Major War Criminals at Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. The literal, matter-of-fact style that Reznikoff uses in the poem is not accidental; it is a conscious technical choice. The horrors of the death camps are placed starkly before us in the words of the survivors, and the poet's selection process denies the reader the opportunity to look away. It also deprives us of any sense of catharsis; these things happened and no good came of them."

Lewis Black (August 30, 1948)

Lewis Black is a stand-up comedian and social commentator who often appears on The Daily Show. He's noisy and unapologetic and has penetrating insights. It's hard to quote him, because even if you remember every word verbatim, you miss his shouting when you repeat what he said.

Joann Sfar (August 28, 1971)

Joann Sfar, French graphic novelist (The Rabbi’s Cat) and film maker (Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life), questions authority, though he’s evidently conventionally religious. So also does the cat in his tale. Suddenly able to speak, the cat demands to learn Jewish law, have a bar mitzvah, and study Kabbalah. He has long disputes with his owner, the rabbi, and the rabbi's own master rabbi -- who says a talking philosophical cat should be drowned. It's a very funny book, with beautiful drawings of North Africa in some former time, where the rabbi and his daughter live.

In an interview several years ago, Sfar said:

“My rabbi is not a modern guy. He’s very old-fashioned. He’s not an intellectual—his relationship with religion is very down-to-earth. He doesn’t really care about God’s existence. He just cares about what he has to do every day. I like the idea of his coming back from Paris and saying that he doesn’t know if there’s a God or not, and then he goes to pray. Many people forget about this relationship to religion as a daily practice. But I’ve always preferred the sayings of my grandma to the dictates of my grand rabbin.”

I hope to see Sfar's new documentary on French singer Serge Gainsbourg, whom I've heard of but never have known anything about.

Update: New York Times review of the film is here.

Man Ray (August 27, 1890)

Man Ray, the fascinating surrealist photographer and artist, was born Emmanuel Radnitzky, and raised in a Jewish home in New York. In keeping with his modernist-Dada-surrealist identity, he shortened the name to Man Ray.

“A conflicted identity … was central to an artist who yearned to escape the limitations of his Russian Jewish immigrant past.”*

Man Ray was close buddies with Marcel Duchamp. Both developed new ways to see the world that still open my eyes when I look at them!

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918)

Did Leonard Bernstein introduce me to classical music when I was a child? I don't remember watching his famous TV shows. In fact, my development as a classical music lover actually came from my father, who listened always to the classical music station and the Saturday afternoon opera broadcasts.

Bernstein, I remember for West Side Story. I doubt if I even noticed that he was Jewish when I was listening to it during high school. And I couldn't say if his music had a particularly noticeable Jewish identity. He wrote Jeremiah (1943), Age of Anxiety (1949), Kaddish (1963), Dybbuk (1974) – as well as a mass.

Howard Jacobson (August 25, 1942)

Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Booker Prize for The Finkler Question. I thought it was a very enjoyable and powerful book, exploring the way that English Jews (and by extension others) create self-hatred. The most extreme of these do so by joining the haters of Israel. The novel is a satire, and one of the most satirically enlightening characters is a non-Jew who wants to be a Jew, not for the religion but for the most superficial cultural aspects.

Various Jewish points of view are illustrated -- with several degrees of irony -- by various characters. However, the characters are fully realized, not just tokens of each intellectual or personality type. I especially remember one question, asked by an elderly character who had a firm secular Jewish identity and did not hate himself. He asked whether the anti-Israel Jew thought that the deaths of his family in the Holocaust were justified retroactively by the acts of Israelis that the self-hater was deploring.

I haven't read any of Jacobson's other books, but they are on my list.

Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899)

-- today's google logo for Borges's birthday

"If Borges were shown to be definitively, halachically, Jewish, he would be hailed as one of the great Jewish writers of the last century. And not just a writer who was Jewish, but a writer whose obsessions with the Holocaust and the Kabbalah prefigure two of contemporary Jewry’s most important concerns," wrote Daniel Schifrin.

The reality is that despite Borges's interest in Jewish themes, and despite the possibility that his ancestors were secret Jews, neither Borges nor other researchers (some of them being malicious antisemites, some simply interested scholars) could demonstrate that he was actually of Jewish descent. “It has not displeased me to think of myself as Jewish,” Borges wrote. But based on the available evidence, he wasn't.

Looking for a Jewish angle to Borges is tempting, but actually, I think it's a distraction from actually trying to read and appreciate what he wrote. The question of his distant ancestry is really peripheral to the way he used big themes in writing very interesting (though to me difficult) stories. In a way, I feel as if the case of Borges is kind of a warning to anyone who tries to find too much Jewishness in famous and accomplished people. A warning to me.

The book Jorge Luis Borges: On Mysticism (eds. Maria Kodama and Suzanne Jill Levine) strikes me as offering many examples of stories that both are and are not Jewish in theme. Each story turns on a variety of experiences and characterizations. Whichever mystic or traditional religious metaphor or device Borges picks, each story seems to have a life of its own -- not necessarily based in Jewishness or any other specific source. Sometimes there's a Jewish theme combined with one or more others, as in "The Zahir" about a mysterious object with vastly different embodiment in various cultures. A character in this story was like "Talmudists and Confucians" because she "sought to make every action irreproachably correct."

Because of its title and central surrealist device, the story "The Aleph" especially tempts critics to make a Jewish interpretation which I don't really think is essential to reading the fiction. Actually, I think Borges kind of warns the reader by the varied role of poetry that takes place in the story itself. One character is an appreciator and critic of other men's verse and also a poet himself. In his cellar he has something called "an Aleph... one of the points in space that contain all points." (p. 35) It's also the "microcosm of the alchemists and Kabbalists, our proverbial friend the multum in parvo, made flesh!" (p. 36; multum in parvo means much in little) And if you can't see the Aleph, says the poet/critic, that doesn't invalidate what he says.

Just at the moment when the narrator of the story -- whose name is Borges -- becomes convinced that the poet/critic is a madman, who actually has no such thing in his cellar, he sees The Aleph for himself. Of course it's difficult for him to describe the mystical experience (though there is quite a long passage doing that). In the end, the poet/critic of the tale wins a prize for poetry while the narrator is left to try to grasp what he had experienced, including to explicate the Hebrew and Kabbalistic interpretation of the letter Aleph.

But here's the thing: you don't need to make out Borges as having a Jewish identity to find a way to read this story. I think it's an interesting route to follow, but it's also a dead end.

Sergey Brin (August 21, 1973)

Google co-founder Brin came from Russia with his parents as a youth. I like following him on Google+ the latest of many google products that I enjoy using.

He's also an arbiter of one of the most important concepts I can think of:

“'Evil is what Sergey says is evil,' explained Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer, in 2002."*

Salamone Rossi (August 19, 1570)

Rossi wrote both secular and Jewish music during his career in Mantua, Italy, where a Jewish community thrived (as much as any Jewish community could thrive in the era of the invention of the Ghetto and shrinking tolerance.) He wrote the first known polyphonic (multi-voice) settings of Jewish texts. He was twice given an exemption from the regulation that Jews had to wear a distinguishing badge.

The hypothesis that Salamone Rossi was born on August 19, 1570, comes from a possible code hidden in his first published collection, the Canzonette (1589). He may have died in the sack of Mantua and destruction of its Ghetto in 1630 – there is no evidence of his composing after 1628.

Radio!

“On August 20, 1920, WWJ (then called 8MK) became the first news radio in the country. It was also the first radio station to broadcast religious sermons and sports.” See this article for details.

The news on radio enabled many Jewish immigrants to become aware of their world when they were often not literate – a force in assimilation that isn’t often remembered. My father talked about a seemingly well-educated friend of the older generation who was educated by radio but couldn’t read.

Roman Vishniac (August 19, 1897)

Vishniac was accomplished in several fields, but is most known for his photos of Jews in Eastern Europe between the wars. His book A Vanished World and Children of a Vanished World are especially important in preserving a visual record of lost communities. For more details see this article.

Madonna (August 16, 1958)

Madonna [Ciccone] the pop singer and sort-of-diva wouldn't have anything to do with Jewishness except for dabbling in a debased version of Kabbalah. I've heard really terrible things about the cynical and manipulative tactics of the L.A. Kabbalah center where movie stars go for some kind of metaphysical thrills. But I'll stop now.

Other August 15 Events

Amazing how many things happened on this date!

• The first refugees from Nazi Germany arrived in the Shanghai Ghetto on August 15, 1938. Many more arrived between November 1938 (after Kristallnacht) and June, 1941. The story of this temporary community and how it survived is an interesting one.
• The right-wing and thus at times antisemitic festival of the Virgin Mary is celebrated in France on August 15.
• It's Evelyn's birthday -- happy birthday!
• It's Julia Child's birthday too, August 15, 1912. No Jewish content here, but she's definitely a hero of mine.
• Hollywood premiere of the Judy Garland "Wizard of Oz" -- August 15, 1939. Jewish content? It's a stretch, but some attribute the theme of "Over the Rainbow" to Jewish longings in the lyricist Harburg and musician Arlen.

Leonard Baskin (Aug. 15, 1922)

Baskin is an American sculptor and painter. He designed the Holocaust Memorial that stands on the University of Michigan campus in Raoul Wallenberg plaza on the site of the oldest Jewish cemetery in town (now destroyed).



The text at the base of the statue reads:

In memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

In memory of the millions more destroyed by prejudice

and hatred during World War II.

In memory of those righteous and courageous few who risked

their lives to save the victims of Nazism.

May this memorial inspire us to resist tyranny and inhumanity

wherever and whenever they threaten.

A GIFT OF

THE ANN ARBOR HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

MARCH 13, 1994

Baskin is well-known as an illustrator. One of my favorites is a Haggadah.

Stephen Breyer (August 15, 1938)

Breyer: another Jewish Supreme Court justice. He's a pretty quiet one, but he votes on the good side a lot.

Napoléon Bonaparte (August 15, 1769)

Perhaps heroic. Perhaps anti-heroic. Beethoven for example, dedicated and un-dedicated the Eroica symphony to his hero/then anti-hero.

Perhaps heroic to Jews: Napoleon “restored” the Sanhedrin; more importantly he freed the Jews from the Ghetto literally tearing down the physical Ghetto gates in several Italian cities; he also extended civil rights to many Jewish populations in France, Italy, and Eastern Europe.

Perhaps anti-heroic: he became a boogie man for Jews in Eastern Europe – his name frightened little children for at least a century after he died.

Needless to say, conflicting views of Napoleon are not limited to a Jewish perspective.

Felix Adler (August 13, 1851)

Adler founded the Ethical Culture Society in 1876. His father was a rabbi, but he became a totally secular Jew and I guess you could say he tried to create an organized religion that didn't have an actual faith, to accommodate his beliefs. Personally I'm just as dubious about organized religion as I am about the content.

Ethical Culture Societies still exist.

George Soros (August 12, 1930)

For right wing demagogues and antisemites (like Glen Beck or Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad) Soros is a stand-in for the old stereotype of the International Jewish Financier who controls the world. His position on Israel also creates doubt among some Jews: “Soros has been strongly criticized in some Jewish circles over his calls for increased U.S. engagement in the Middle East peace process and his strong criticism of Israeli policies. In recent months, some pro-Israel advocates and pundits have slammed J Street for accpeting his money and then lying about doing so.” -- http://forward.com/articles/133080/

Can anyone so rich be well-liked? I guess not.

“The Night of the Murdered Poets” (August 12, 1952)

“The Night of the Murdered Poets” is the name sometimes given to a Stalinist massacre of thirteen Soviet citizens, several of them poets and writers. All were supporters of the Communist regime, but that didn't matter. They were taken away, tried, and executed -- probably because they were Jewish; at least that was one of the reasons. Their names: Peretz Markish, David Hofstein, Leib Kvitko, Itzik Feffer, David Bergelson, Solomon Lozovsky, Boris Shimeliovich, Benjamin Zuskin, Joseph Yuzefovich, Leon Talmy, Ilya Vatenberg, Chaika Ostrovskaya, and Emilia Teumin.

David Brooks (August 11, 1961)

David Brooks -- anti hero!!! Especially for his wanton and careless use of science to score points in his political arguments.

Or to cite a current review of his work: "His views are right of center but often moderate. He represents a gentle and somewhat eclectic brand of conservatism—he is, for example, pro-choice and fond of President Obama—and, not surprisingly, he is sometimes dismissed by mainstream Republicans. "

Alfred Döblin (August 10, 1878)

Alfred Döblin is the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand about the Jews in Berlin between the wars.

Tisha b’Av (August 8, 2011)

On Tisha b’Av, which falls today in this year's Jewish calendar, religious Jews mourn the fall of both Temples in Jerusalem, and many other misfortunes that have happened to the Jewish people. They read the Book of Job, in some traditions while seated on the floor in mourning garb. I therefore choose today to mention the Book of Job, which I find the most powerful and challenging book of the Bible. Though the message of the book is essentially religious, the questions it poses are as deeply disturbing to a non-religious person like me as I imagine they would be to a thoughtful religious person.

Although music is not traditional for Tisha b'Av, the Forward offered a wonderful selection of music from a variety of times and places: Music for the 9th of Av: On Jerusalem, Exile and Homelessness – Forward Thinking – Forward.com. Suggestions include several musical arrangements of Psalm 137, "By the waters of Babylon," songs about Jerusalem, songs about homelessness, and songs about persecution.

Pissarro Exhibit

In the New York Times: a review of an article and slide show about an exhibit of paintings by Pissarro: Populating the Landscape With Idealism.

Pissarro was a powerful influence on the Impressionists, but very much an outsider in France:

"He was born thousands of miles away from Europe in 1830, on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, then a Danish colony. His father was a dry-goods merchant from Bordeaux, his mother a Caribbean-born daughter of French parents. Both sides of the family were Sephardic Jews. Pissarro himself chose to remain a Danish citizen all his life.

"Even on St. Thomas his status was outside the norm. His parents were unmarried when he was born, bringing censure from Jews on the island. As a child he went to a local Moravian school with Afro-Caribbean children, where he spoke English instead of French."

He was also a political outsider, "deeply immersed in revolutionary politics, specifically in anarchist thinking that espoused a radically egalitarian, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian society."

His attitude towards others was generous:

"Pissarro’s idealism was insistent. Because he wanted his projection of a better future to be realized, he tried to work it out in the present, through his own practice of ethical generosity, firm in the face of political censorship (he was closely watched by the French police because of his anarchist ties), anti-Semitism (he forgave this in Degas) and professional isolation as an artist who was neither born French nor had French citizenship...."

Above all, Pissarro was a fabulous artist. I've not seen the reviewed exhibit, but I love his paintings that I've seen in Paris, Chicago, and a number of other places.

Raoul Wallenberg (August 4, 1912)

Here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Wallenberg is a well-known figure because he studied at the University of Michigan from 1931-1935. Raoul Wallenberg Plaza on campus includes a plaque that reads: "Here we honor Raould Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat whose heroic actions to save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews in 1944 are a contrast to the collaboration and silence which dominated Europe. A 1935 graduate of the University of Michigan College of Architecture, Raoul Wallenberg was taken captive by Soviet forces at the end of World War II, disappearing from sight but not from memory."

The Holocaust Memorial in Raoul Wallenberg Plaza, by Leonard Baskin:



As a member of a prominent Swedish family, Wallenberg became a partner in a firm with a Hungarian Jewish owner, and obtained various international jobs. While on assignment to a bank in Haifa in the mid-1930s, he met Jews who were fleeing from the early Nazi persecutions. Wallenberg had a distant Jewish ancestor, but his humanitarian commitments seem more universal than that.

In 1944, Wallenberg went to Budapest to try to save Jews from Nazi death camps. He succeeded in saving tens of thousands who were about to be deported, by issuing them certificates that said they were Swedish. For this he has been honored in many places.

At the end of the war, Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets, and deported to Moscow. His fate was for a long time unknown, the subject of Soviet lies and evasions. The best guess seems to be that he was executed in Russia in 1947. See this article for more details.

Barack Obama (August 4, 1961)

Hero or anti-hero? I expected so much of Obama, but he's much more conservative than I ever expected, and hasn't stood up to the extraordinary Republican evils. As I write and schedule this, I don't know what will be the result of the showdown over the debt ceiling. But I don't need to know that to feel somewhat betrayed by this seeming hero.

Catch-22 is Fifty Years Old

I was especially interested in this article -- "The Awful Truth of Catch-22" --exploring the meaning of Heller's novel. Summary of the author's point:

"I think Heller's argument was not with war or with death but with God. That the novel is less about the death of Snowden than "the death of God," as that theological tendency was known back then. That what the novel is really about is theodicy. Theodicy being of course the subcategory of theology which attempts (and studies the attempts) to reconcile human suffering, cruelty, and evil with the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God. Heller doesn't think it can be done."

Shimon Peres (August 2, 1923)

Shimon Peres connects Israel today to its foundation in 1948 – he’s been in politics from the beginning, is now the President of Israel (as distinct from Prime Minister). Born on Degania Alef the first Kibbutz – and what could better represent secular Judaism of the Israeli variety than a Kibbutz?

Ramblin' Jack Elliott (August 1, 1931)

A few years ago, I saw a documentary film about the life of Ramblin' Jack Elliot, American folk singer -- The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack.

I learned that his birth name was Elliot Charles Adnopoz, and that he grew up Jewish in Brooklyn and then recreated his folk music identity so people thought he was maybe a cowboy or a country boy or anything but what he was. He learned from Woody Guthrie, and from his wanderings around the country. I also learned about his extensive influence on American folk music, including on Bob Dylan, and began to wonder why so many Jews participated in the folk music revival as collectors, singers, and other innovators. I wonder. But I can't think of any but the most trite and sterotyped answers about Jews as semi-outsiders.

Primo Levi (July 31, 1919)

The importance of eyewitness documentation of the Jewish experiences of all the nightmares of the Holocaust becomes more important as time passes. Levi wrote some of the most unbearable and effective of these documents, testimony to his own experiences, and equally of literary value.