Among the Literati

Some days, I can't help thinking back 25 years to my high-school French course, which is where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu—the happy medium—and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is the happy medium so elusive? Why do I more often feel caught betwixt and between or, even among my fellow Jewish-American writers, alone?

Liberalism and Literary Criticism  Seth Mandel,  Contentions.  Jewish pro-Israel leftists are viscerally unwanted by their peers, who try desperately to strip figures like Leon Wieseltier and David Grossman of their identities.  SAVE

Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine  Ben Lorber,  Palestine Chronicle.  The writer complains that as "pro-Palestinian discourse begins to make itself heard" in the OWS movement, "right-wing organizations" are denouncing it as anti-Semitic.  SAVE

Write On for Israel  writeonforisrael.org.  The advocacy journalism program that trains high school students in pro-Israel writing, speaking, and broadcasting.  SAVE

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Freud's Last Session.

The Couch and the Confessional

Sigmund Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism, was published in 1939, a year after  he fled, mortally ill with cancer of the jaw, from Nazi-occupied Vienna to London.  The book is famous for its speculations that Moses was not Jewish and that the people he led out of Egyptian slavery murdered him.   

Armand Nicholi on Freud and Lewis  Charlie Rose.  The author discusses the "striking parallelism" between Freud's and Lewis' ideas and the enduring consequences of both. (Video)  SAVE

Defender of the Faith?  Mark Edmundson,  New York Times.  The critic explains his reasons for concluding that Freud, near the end of his life, began to recognize "the poetry and promise in religion."  SAVE

The Question of God  PBS.  A PBS series inspired by Nicholi's work, including excerpts from Freud's and Lewis' writings, interviews with scholars and thinkers, and a guide for group discussions.  SAVE

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2011: A Year in Books

The holidays are over, the coffee-table books have all been unwrapped and set aside, and winter isn't going anywhere for a while. In short, it's time to settle in for some good reading. The literary critic D. G. Myers here presents the 38 best Jewish books of 2011, all of which merit your attention.

2010: A Year in Books  D.G. Myers,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  From the popular to the scholarly, a reader's and buyer's guide to 34 of the best books of 2010.  SAVE

Retrieving American Jewish Fiction  D.G. Myers,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  A historical symposium of some neglected classics, and an introduction to the avot and imahot of American Jewish writing.  SAVE

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Highlights of 2011:
Part II

Part II of our round-up of the past year's most popular features on Jewish Ideas Daily. (Part I is here.)

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Part II"

Kosher Fiction

Haredi adventure stories are a curious but popular genre. There is the 2005 Yiddish-language film A gesheft ("A Deal"), the story of a Hasid-gone-bad out for revenge on the pious man he wrongly blames for his childhood misfortunes.

Haredi Films  Rachel Leket-Mor,  Association of Jewish Libraries.  The current demand for appropriate entertaining titles in the Haredi community in Israel is reflected, among other things, in the growing movie industry led by Haredi producers and directors. (Audio)  SAVE

Beneath Black Hats  Eitan Kensky,  Forward.  With some noteworthy results, American movies and television are beginning to present Hasidim not as caricatures but as actual individuals; still, there's a long way to go.  SAVE

A Voice of One's Own  D.G. Myers,  Literary Commentary.  What makes American Jewish novelists different from other American novelists—and almost instantly recognizable as Jewish?  SAVE

Lives of the Ex-Haredim  Joshua Halberstam,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The men and women who leave their ultra-Orthodox communities usually leave the Jewish world entirely. As a result, that world is losing a resource that it can hardly afford to squander.  SAVE

The Great Orthodox Comeback  Lawrence Grossman,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The resurgence of Orthodoxy is one of the most surprising transformations of Judaism in the past 60 years. Is one single man responsible?  SAVE

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