Yossi Vassa

It Sounds Better in Amharic

 

In his one-man play, It Sounds Better in Amharic, the Ethiopian-born Israeli actor Yossi Vassa humorously contrasts life in the old world and the new, mulling over the differences between traditional and modern ways of dating and the respective virtues of traveling by donkey or Lamborghini. He also narrates his family's 400-mile journey from Ethiopia to Sudan—from where, in 1984, the Israeli air force flew 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Vassa's family covered the 400 miles on foot, in three months. "Not to brag," he comments, "but it took the children of Israel 40 years."

Operation Moses  Edward Alexander,  Commentary.  The rescue of the starving and impoverished Ethiopian Jews was high drama; the welcome they received in Israel was equally dramatic, as well as generous and enthusiastic.  SAVE

It Sounds Better in Amharic  Yossi Vassa,  Nephesh Theatre.  Selected scenes from a one-man play. (Video; introduction in Hebrew)  SAVE

Ras Deshen  YouTube.  Abatte Barihun and Yitzhak Yedid combine the ancient feel of Ethiopian music with the modern spirit of free jazz. (Video.)  SAVE

Sol Levitas, 1958.

Requiem for a Big Little Magazine

 

After eighty-six years, eighty-two in print and the last few in cyberspace, the New Leader, a quintessential American "little magazine," is folding. Like all good publications, it both embodied and analyzed a world of its own, a world worth remembering. 

Life after Life  Myron Kolatch,  New Leader.  From the March-April 2010 issue of the magazine, in its digital incarnation. (PDF)  SAVE

A Liberal Beacon Burns Out  Charles McGrath,  New York Times.  The 2006 report conjuring up the magazine's past that also led to its brief reprieve.  SAVE

My Years with Kolatch  Ben Yagoda,  American Scholar.  A reminiscence of life at America's most significant obscure magazine by the author of, most recently, Memoir: A History. (PDF)  SAVE

Kobi Oz

Psalms for the Perplexed

 

Some mainstream Israeli musicians have recently been turning for material to religious texts; others have become immersed in the musical traditions of Sephardi Jewry. The two trends have come together in a new album, Mizmorei Nevukhim ("Psalms for the Perplexed"), by Kobi Oz.

Psalms for the Perplexed  Makom.  Kobi Oz's new album: all songs are in Hebrew with English translation and an interview in English. (Audio and video.)  SAVE

My God  Kobi Oz,  YouTube.  Oz sings a "duet" with his late grandfather. (Video, Hebrew.)  SAVE

With All My Heart  Etti Ankri,  YouTube.  A devotional poem by Yehuda Halevi (ca. 1075-1141) set to music and sung. (Audio, Hebrew.)  SAVE

Lowly Spirit  Barry Sacharoff,  YouTube.  A musical interpretation of a poem by Shlomo ibn Gabirol (ca. 1021-ca.1058). (Audio, Hebrew.)  SAVE

My Father, Jacqueline Kahanoff, and the Levantine Dilemma  Ronit Matalon,  BGU Review.  On the struggles of two "Oriental" Jewish writers who arrived in Israel in the 1950's and never found their place.  SAVE

Retrieving A.M. Klein

 

What qualifies a literary work as "Jewish"? Debates on this subject, once conducted with rigor, have become sillier over the years, descending to the recent call for inducting the African American writer Walter Mosley—whose mother was Jewish, and in whose detective novels the heroes are all black men—into the Jewish literary pantheon.

A.M. Klein  Zaillig Pollock,  Canadian Poetry Online.  An introduction to the poet's life and works, with sample poems.  SAVE

The Poet as Person  Ezra Glinter,  Forward.  A man of many talents, interests, and occupations, Klein was fascinated most of all by the power of language.  SAVE

The Mentor of Montreal  Heather McRobie,  Guardian.  A teacher to the next generation of Montreal poets, Klein struggled like a student to reconcile the different parts of his identity.  SAVE

Insight & Analysis

Defiance  ToldotYisrael.  YouTube.  Six men who flouted a 1930 British law and blew the shofar at the Western Wall tell their story. (Video).  SAVE

Combing for Treasure  Joseph Berger.  New York Times.  Researchers are finally being allowed to review the books and papers of the great Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, who died in 1982.  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

Sephardi Siren  Rahel Musleah.  Hadassah.  Yasmin Levy, whose music is like a "deep pool of exquisite yearning and heartbreak," is the international voice—and face—of Ladino song.  SAVE

Not Your Grandmother’s Candlesticks  Menachem Wecker.  Jewish Press.  To view the works exhibited at a recent show of contemporary ritual Judaica is to ask where the line should be drawn between Jewish art and Jewish kitsch.  SAVE

Through a Warped Lens  John Podhoretz.  Weekly Standard.  When it comes to the Holocaust, even a documentary based on original footage, like Yael Hersonski's A Film Unfinished, has more in common with other movies than with the experience it depicts.  SAVE

Class Menagerie  Adam Kirsch.  Tablet.  A collection of Japanese figurines illuminates the history of the European Jewish dynasty who owned it.  SAVE

Audio/Visual

 

Sing to the Lord!

 

Of making Jewish music there is no end, but how many contemporary composers of distinguished work in this genre have been featured on From the Top, National Public Radio's program about exceptional young musicians? Jeremiah Klarman, age thirteen when he appeared on the NPR show, may be the sole exception. Now seventeen, with a demonstrated mastery of styles from classical to klezmer, and with chamber, orchestral, and pop compositions under his belt, Klarman has turned his lavish and protean talents to choral music. A premier of his latest work, the cantata Hallel, Shir v'Or ("Praise, Song, and Light"), drawing largely on well-known verses from the book of Psalms, took place in late December at Temple Emanuel in Newton, Mass.  Performed by the Zamir Chorale of Boston under the direction of Joshua R. Jacobson, it culminates in a room-rocking, soul-lifting Halleluyah! for chorus and orchestra.

A Day in the Life  Richard Dyer,  Boston Globe.  Jeremiah Klarman spends an afternoon in 2006 with the "moved, impressed, and amazed" composer Osvald Golijov.  SAVE

Music on Jewish Themes  Jeremiah Klarman.  An annotated list.  SAVE

Halleluyah!  Jeremiah Klarman,  Zamir Chorale.  The final movement of Hallel, Shir v'Or. Listen to the first and second movements. Read the words.  SAVE

The Composer on the Music  Jeremiah Klarman.  Program notes on Hallel, Shir v'Or.  SAVE

SAVE "Sing to the Lord!"

On Books

Retrieving American Jewish Fiction: Abraham Cahan

 

D.G. Myers

Third in a series on landmarks in American Jewish literature

MyersIn 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"

Jerusalem Letter

Poets and Warriors

 

Aryeh Tepper

Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934) was the poet of Jewish national rebirth and a leading light of cultural Zionism. To be more precise, he was a power station. Composing poems, writing essays, founding journals, raising up the sparks of Israel's past, Bialik became an essential source of energy for Jewish cultural revival.  

Continue Reading "Poets and Warriors"  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  SAVE

Grand Things to Write a Poem On  Hillel Halkin,  Gefen.  An "autobiography" of Shmuel Hanagid in 64 poems, translated and introduced.  SAVE

Shmuel Hanagid  Peter Cole,  Princeton University Press.  Selected poems, including the lines cited above, in translation.  SAVE

SAVE "Poets and Warriors"

On Books

 

Abraham Sutzkever: In Memoriam

 

Ruth R. Wisse

It was bound to happen. Abraham Sutzkever, born July 15, 1913, in Smorgon, Lithuania, one of the great poets of the twentieth century and the last towering figure of modern Yiddish literature, died this Wednesday, January 20, in Tel Aviv, where he had lived since 1947. A descendant of rabbis, Sutzkever applied to the writing of poetry the standards of refinement that his ancestors had practiced in obedience to Jewish religious law. During World War II, when he was herded into the ghetto with the rest of Vilna Jewry, he determinedly continued composing, persuaded that "the angel of poetry" protects the creator of timeless—but only of truly timeless—work.

Continue Reading "Abraham Sutzkever: In Memoriam"  Ruth R. Wisse,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  SAVE

Selected Poetry and Prose  Abraham Sutzkever,  California.  SAVE

Siberia  Abraham Sutzkever, Marc Chagall,  Abelard-Schuman.  SAVE

The Fiddle Rose  Abraham Sutzkever,  Wayne State.  SAVE

The Poet Reads  Abraham Sutzkever,  Smithsonian Folkways (Yiddish).  SAVE

A Vogn Shikh (A Cartload of Shoes)  Abraham Sutzkever,  YouTube (Yiddish).  SAVE

SAVE "Abraham Sutzkever: In Memoriam"

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