http://www.nextbook.org/ A digest of Jewish cultural news from around the world. en-us http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 The Times Literary Supplement explores the concept of intertextuality in a review of The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi. Contributors see Levi as "a double agent, engaged in 'ironic rewriting of divine utterances in secular terms.'" ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4461 Thu, 08 May 2008 12:35:20 PM being denied here is the notion that Jews, no matter how we behave, are the same as non-Jews," a sociologist tells him. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4463 Thu, 08 May 2008 12:35:14 PM Surfwise portrays "Doc" Paskowitz, a legendary health-nut who brought surfing to Israel, as "the alpha-male antithesis of the shtetl Jew." The film operates in "colorful-geezer mode," says The Village Voice; Paskowitz complains to The Jewish Week that director Doug Pray "just wanted to make me an oddball." Tony Michels included Paskowitz in his take on Jews and hanging ten.
    The LA Jewish Film Festival kicks off tonight; among highlights are Little Traitor, based on Amos Oz's Panther in the Basement. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4462 Thu, 08 May 2008 12:35:07 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=835 Thu, 08 May 2008 12:17:54 PM Atmospheric Disturbances ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=830 Wed, 07 May 2008 12:46:21 PM The Rabbi's Cat 2, the latest installment in Joann Sfar's graphic novel series about an observant talking feline in 1930s Algeria, drifts "between precise historical details, enthusiastic tall tales and meditations on what it means to live as a person of faith in a world that doesn't share it," says Douglas Wolk. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4458 Wed, 07 May 2008 12:22:11 PM Haaretz reprints a letter in which writer Aharon Reuveni claims credit for naming the Jewish state in 1948. In it, he summarily rejects "all manner of bizarre, faulty, untoward and tasteless names" including "State of the Hebrews." Israel, he wrote, "hints at man's war with the forces of nature, which is the basis for all human progress." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4457 Wed, 07 May 2008 12:22:00 PM nobody knows," a colleague once said of the performer, composer, and poet legendary in the Bukharan community. In Queens, his adopted hometown, he was known for his interpretation of traditional folk music that "originated as the court music of feudal Bukhara." Malayev died last week. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4459 Wed, 07 May 2008 12:21:49 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=827 Tue, 06 May 2008 12:17:20 PM Click here for details. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4456 Tue, 06 May 2008 12:16:25 PM Avraham Burg reiterates that the Holocaust must be remembered, "but no longer by prostrating ourselves in the dust." Perhaps he would be buoyed by an "oddly vibrant exhibition" at Yad Vashem featuring the contributions of survivors, particularly in the design realm. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4455 Tue, 06 May 2008 12:16:19 PM Jewish Museum Milwaukee has opened its doors, and has a special display about native daughter Golda Meir. The city "is a microcosm of America," says the museum's executive director. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4454 Tue, 06 May 2008 12:16:12 PM PETA agents who busted kosher slaughterhouse AgriProcessors in 2004 have outed themselves to bring publicity to their cause. Hannah and Philip Schein are concerned that Orthodox practices have gotten "so focused on the letter of the law that they've lost sight of the fact that [kashrut] is about reducing suffering." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4453 Tue, 06 May 2008 12:15:58 PM Mordecai Richler seems "so vividly alive that I wanted to keep hanging out with the irascible old master," says the Globe and Mail; however, the book "focuses too relentlessly on Richler in relation to Judaism." Fixated on "the elements of Richler's fiction that shed light on his life," says the Toronto Star, Kramer veers into "some disturbingly naïve Freudianisms." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4451 Mon, 05 May 2008 12:54:41 PM The Jerusalem Post reports on Circumcise Me, a documentary about Yisrael Campbell, a former Catholic and recovered addict who's now an Orthodox Jew and a popular Israeli comedian. Filmmakers David Blumenthal and Matthew Kalman used phrases from tourist apparel to title the movie's segments after seeing "the ultimate slogan--boxer shorts which said 'I'm Jewish, wanna check?'" The Economist calls the film "hilarious and moving." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4452 Mon, 05 May 2008 12:54:22 PM Theodor Herzl's allegorical Zionist novel Altneuland "prosaic and boringly didactic." Fifty years later, he says it has "not improved in the meantime," but admits it was "prescient in anticipating how the Jewish colony in Palestine" would develop. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4450 Mon, 05 May 2008 12:54:12 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=828 Mon, 05 May 2008 11:10:12 AM Aharon Appelfeld, the publication of Zvi Yavetz's My Czernowitz is an occasion to mull over the city's continuing hold on the imagination. "The Czernowitzian spirit brought to the world types of people in whom the Jewish and the humane combined in a special manner," he writes in Haaretz. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4447 Fri, 02 May 2008 12:38:48 PM Heeb talks to the "raunchy, self-effacing Jewish guys" responsible for the Harold and Kumar franchise. GQ sees the movies as a sign of progress: "Jewish characters used to have to be disguised as--or in a pinch, played by--goys to keep Middle America buying tickets. Now they’ve got to be passed off as dope-happy Koreans and Indians to avoid looking like juvenile Woody Allens." The folks at Racialicious are none too pleased with this analysis. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4449 Fri, 02 May 2008 12:38:42 PM Fugitive Pieces (based on the Holocaust novel by Anne Michaels) doesn't deal explicitly with sexuality, but director Jeremy Podeswa says there are clear points of connection for gay audiences: The movie engages "with issues of intimacy, with the repercussions of political persecution, and with the importance of compassion, charity, and self-sacrifice." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4448 Fri, 02 May 2008 12:38:35 PM A.B. Yehoshua's story "The Soul Mate" is worried about his son's army buddy, who "greets me, choking with excitement. It is hard to say which is greater: his anxiety or his delight at my arrival." Eventually, "like all soldiers who finish their tour of duty, this one also has the urge to cleanse his soul in distant lands." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4446 Thu, 01 May 2008 01:01:26 PM refugee boy" whose family came to NYC after fleeing the Nazis in Italy. A "handmaiden to the stars," he later had an affair with Rudolf Nureyev, whose beauty distracted Gruen from the dancer's anti-Semitism. He dishes in his new memoir, Callas Kissed Me...Lenny Too! ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4445 Thu, 01 May 2008 01:01:20 PM schmaltz," posits the Village Voice; both are diasporic cultures that "maintain a kind of identity through art and ritual." Might this attempt to draw parallels amount to "romantic blarney"? ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4444 Thu, 01 May 2008 01:01:11 PM clandestine operations bringing immigrants to Palestine" in the 1940s. The struggle that ensued was memorialized in Leon Uris's Exodus, which later became a film directed by Otto Preminger. Harel died this week in Tel Aviv. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4443 Thu, 01 May 2008 01:00:59 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=821 Thu, 01 May 2008 12:30:28 PM Stefan Zweig's The Post-Office Girl is "thoroughly broken," until she meets a WWI veteran "more angry than she knows how to be." Zweig completed the novel--just published in English for the first time--as he was driven into exile by the Nazis. The N.Y. Observer loves the "universal story of psychological struggle and spiritual testing." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4440 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:47:18 PM N.Y. Times has the whole epic story, which involves sneaking parchment panels into Auschwitz. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4442 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:47:12 PM Tony Judt's Reappraisals is "fascinating, edifying, and frustrating," says the L.A. Times, in part because so few of the essays touch on the author's controversial criticisms of Israel. The Guardian contends that "he writes with fearless integrity and moral seriousness" even when he is wrong, and enjoys his "illuminating assessments of Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4441 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:47:02 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=825 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:00:29 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=826 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:17:17 PM 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, is "a commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study," writes David Remnick. Morris "makes every attempt at depth and balance" despite professing a "cosmic pessimism" about the state of the Middle East.
    Salon takes a look at J Street, a progressive PAC aiming "to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4437 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:34:11 PM good news for Bahrain's deep-rooted values of tolerance and openness," according to a representative of the country's Shura Council. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4438 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:34:02 PM enormously fraught enterprise," Adam Mansbach reports from his book tour, mere weeks before the birth of his first child. In Charlottesville, he does time on a panel called "Nice Jewish Writers Gone Wild"--"I can hardly bear it," he cringes--alongside A.J. Jacobs. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4439 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:33:55 PM The Lazarus Project centers on a quest to unearth the truth about the death of a young Jewish immigrant in 1908 Chicago. Bookforum calls it a "major achievement." In the Washington Post, David Leavitt praises its "ingenious" structure and and says Aleksandar Hemon "is as much a writer of the senses as of the intellect." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4434 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:24:12 PM Naturalized. Next month we'll present David Cronenberg's At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4433 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:24:06 PM soul and style to Bernard Malamud," said the judge bestowing the PEN/Malamud prize on Cynthia Ozick, who also won the PEN/Nabokov award. And Michael Chabon continues his cross-genre conquest, picking up the Nebula award from the Sci-Fi Writers of America. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4435 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:23:59 PM Toronto Star. In 1984, the "legendary impresario" produced a stage musical based on Mordecai Richler's novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. "Few contributed more to the Canadian cultural fabric," says the Montreal Gazette, calling Gesser "a total mensch." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4436 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:23:47 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=814 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:55:35 AM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=824 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:56:22 PM their beards, only because 'our forefathers did not have heaters.'" Changing halacha, he tells Haaretz, should be more "user-friendly." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4430 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:14:21 PM Then She Found Me, based on a novel by Elinor Lipman, first-time director Helen Hunt "emphasizes her characters' various shades of Jewishness," says The NY Times. The film, about a lonely woman who loses her mother and her husband before stumbling into motherhood, says The NY Sun, "distances itself from the wallowing self-pity that the plot description might predict." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4432 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:14:15 PM pork eater--and self-proclaimed messiah (he was born on the Ninth of Av, the prophesied birthday of the future messiah)." The collective raises the animal for scientific research and "eats the excess." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4431 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:14:10 PM Click here for details. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4429 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:30:47 PM women alone," she tells The Jewish Press. First, though, she and her husband had to build a studio, because the ones around were "not modest and unbefitting a God-fearing Jew." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4426 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:30:30 PM World Jewish Digest profiles NY Lifespring, which matches would-be parents and egg donors. Says one mother to be, "You can imagine that 3,000 years ago you were part of the same tribe, you share the same gene pool." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4428 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:30:23 PM storage capacity has about as much room as a cramped Lower East Side apartment." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4427 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:30:11 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=823 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:26:58 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=822 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:31:54 PM Masha Gessen's Blood Matters is "brilliant," says Time Out. Bloomberg finds her examination of genetic testing "compelling, thoughtful and provocative," unlike Jessica Queller's BRCA gene memoir, Pretty Is What Changes. The WSJ differs: Gessen's too "reserved with her personal story." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4424 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:22:06 PM Secrets of the Dead tells stories that "either shed some light on a moment in history we know a lot about or a moment that has been forgotten." An upcoming episode is dedicated to the account of two men who escaped from Auschwitz, hiding for three days in a woodpile. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4423 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:21:51 PM romantic lead again"! Heeb sits down with Jason Segel, the Forgetting Sarah Marshall star whose character ends up with "the first nice Jewish girl to make it past Apatow's shiksa goddess fixation." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4422 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:21:38 PM Arthur Rubinstein's My Young Years, "a classic autobiography in the grand manner." The Lodz-born pianist recounts "delicious stories"--including early mentorship by violinist Joseph Joachim--and mourns the "lost world of pre-World War I Europe."
    At the California Book Awards, The Yiddish Policemen's Union took home a gold medal for fiction, and Robert Alter's translation of the Book of Psalms won a "special, out-of-category commendation." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4420 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:16:41 PM Weird Tales editor Ann VanderMeer has a rundown of the (hypothetical) kosher-ness of various "fantastical animals and beings." Sighs one commenter: "There goes my plan for dragon brisket." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4419 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:16:34 PM N.Y. Mag looks at the rising popularity of atheism. Their investigation includes a stop at the City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, where members sing "songs that have been carefully excised of a deity." The rabbi explains: "We offer a different door in...One that doesn't ask you to compromise your lack of beliefs." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4418 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:16:27 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=819 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:10:01 PM memory, irony, learning and laughter clearly inform her outlook," declares the Jerusalem Post of Cynthia Ozick. The stories in her new collection, Dictation, are "sly, searching and subversive." Michael Dirda says "it'll be hard to stop reading once you start." In Bookforum, Michael Gorra reflects on Ozick's "speculative modern midrash." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4417 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:19:59 PM Constantine's Sword "casts a critical eye on the church's treatment of other religions, primarily Judaism, since the 11th century, and its findings aren't pretty," says the N.Y. Sun. The N.Y. Times finds it "enthralling and troubling." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4416 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:19:53 PM The Chicago Tribune untangles the multi-ethnic roots of macaroons, a cookie "more homestyle than haute." The earliest reference dates back to an 8th-century French monastery, though it seems the name derives from Italian.
    On his blog, Mark Bittman reveals his secret for perfect matzo brei (turns out it's also Frank Gehry's). ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4415 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:19:45 PM Click here for details. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4392 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:30:32 PM Radar's excerpt from Daniel Radosh's book Rapture Ready, the author attends the Christian Comedy Association's annual conference. He finds that "being Jewish gave me a certain cachet...as both the theological older brother and as a member of a group that does have a reputation for being funny." ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4412 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:30:17 PM Joan Nathan asks Holocaust survivors what eating was like during the the war, when "talking about food or even writing recipes became tools of the mind to survive." One woman recalls convening a Seder at Bergen-Belsen days before the camp's liberation, and hiding turnips in her shoes to make matzo. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4413 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:30:11 PM inspired him. ]]> http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/filteritem.html?id=4411 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:30:03 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=820 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:41:01 AM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=818 Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:36:39 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=674 Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:40:38 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=817 Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:17:47 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=816 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:20:44 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=806 Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:11:48 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=812 Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:28:01 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=815 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:53:11 AM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=810 Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:12:01 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=813 Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:45:08 AM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=802 Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:17:07 PM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=811 Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:42:11 AM http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=809 Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:14:58 PM