By Mark Cohen
The voices that come alive in “Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora” beat down the tiresome impulse to prove history relevant. Instead, the six excellent and painstakingly researched scholarly papers, edited by Julia R. Lieberman, prove their worth in a better way: They tell stories that reveal how besieged societies strain to hold on to their traditions and to civilized life.
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By Mark Cohen
Why not simply admit it? The new collection of Saul Bellow’s “Letters” (Viking 2010) is a modern reliquary. It is a treasured remnant of the beloved wonderworker. And who are the followers, the faithful? Bookish cranks, mainly, plus unstoppable line-quoters, Jewish lit fetishists, passionate scholars, and the unclassifiable lovers of living books (beautiful girl reading “Humboldt’s Gift” years ago on a stone bench at the Frick Museum, here’s something new for you!).
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By Mark Cohen
From this you make a living?
No undertaking deserved that Jewish punch line more than turning the French folksong “Frère Jacques” into a parody called “Sarah Jackman.” But Allan Sherman showed how that could be done.
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By Mark Cohen
I had skin in the game when Bill Morgan’s “The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete Uncensored History of the Beat Generation” (
Simon & Schuster) was published a month ago. With a title like that, it would surely undermine the premise of my own just released Beat book,
“Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim.”Read More
By Mark Cohen
Henry Roth’s new posthumous novel, “An American Type,” owes the attention it is getting, and indeed its very existence, to the author’s 1934 classic modernist Jewish novel, “Call It Sleep.” Nothing less than that masterpiece could have inspired the devotion required to whittle the 270-page “An American Type” out of “Batch 2” — 1,900 pages left at the writer’s death — by the aptly named Willing Davidson, a fiction editor at The New Yorker.
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Claims Conference Chief Knew of $57M Holocaust Fraud Probe Earlier 
Top Dog: Who Makes the Best Kosher Hot Dog in America?
Why Do Jews Intermarry at a Much Higher Rate Than Others?
End Orthodox Monopoly on Jewish Marriage in Israel
Boston Bombers Pal Slain in Florida Eyed in 'Jewish' Triple Murder
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