Insight & Analysis
Take My Synagogue—Please Philologos. Forward. In referring to the place where they worship, most Jews prefer to use a name other than "synagogue," the ancient Greek translation of beit k'nesset. SAVE
The Few, the Proud, the Chosen Sam Jacobson. Commentary. From kosher Boxed Nasties to the minyan at Al Asad air base: life as a Jewish Marine. SAVE
Is Diss a System? David Spencer. H-Net. A new book explicates the work of the American cartoonist and storyteller Milt Gross (Nize Baby, Dunt Ask!, etc.), who flourished in the 1920s and 30s—and whom it would be a colossal error to judge from a 21st-century perspective. SAVE
Unleavened Politics Fred MacDowell. On the Main Line. In a declassified 1976 document, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the president of the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel discuss the shipment of matzah into the Soviet Union. SAVE
Aligned with Liberty Sol Stern. New Criterion. Norman Podhoretz's break with the Left led to one of the most dramatic moments in American and American Jewish history of the last half-century; a new biography tells the whole story. SAVE
Both Sides Now Trymaine Lee. New York Times. Black Orthodox Jews, who form insular but highly energized communities, are making inroads in public awareness. SAVE
Mixed Emotions Elizabeth Weingarten. Atlantic. Iranian Jews in America straddle at least three different societies and identities; still, they build their homes of brick, to last. SAVE
D.G. Myers
Third in a series on landmarks in American Jewish literature
In American literature, the critic Leslie Fiedler once quipped, nothing succeeds like failure. But among American Jewish writers, something like the reverse is closer to the truth: for many of their fictional characters, nothing fails so miserably as success. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), the first classic of Jewish fiction in America.
Continue Reading "Retrieving American Jewish Fiction: Abraham Cahan" D. G. Myers, Jewish Ideas Daily. SAVE
The Rise of David Levinsky Abraham Cahan, Google Books. The book in its entirety. SAVE
SAVE "Retrieving American Jewish Fiction: Abraham Cahan"