By Zackary Sholem Berger
Elinor Nauen is Manhattan’s unofficial poet laureate of cars and baseball. Her newest book,
“So Late Into the Night,” is a rollicking road trip on the model of Byron’s
“Don Juan,” with over 600 stanzas of
ottava rima about Derek Jeter (her non-Platonic obsession), road trips, her husband, morning minyan and herself. Nauen chatted with The Arty Semite about moving to New York from South Dakota, writing about shul, and whether Derek Jeter will ever read her poems.
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By Zackary Sholem Berger
The editors at ZEEK recently came out with a
poetry manifesto. Since the journal devotes significant space to poetry, and there are precious few publications which consider Jewish poetry in a serious way, I looked forward to their treatment of the subject. I glanced at the last paragraph and saw that the authors wanted to “blast open the possibility of what Jewish poetry can be” — certainly an ambitious goal. I hoped that the manifesto would tell us how.
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By Zackary Sholem Berger
There are many bilingual Jewish books in which the two languages are dependent on each other. The Gemara is a mostly Aramaic reworking of the Hebrew-language Mishnah. The stories of Reb Nachman of Breslov were told in Yiddish, but their first written versions were in Hebrew. The majority of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work is now best known not in the original Yiddish, but in the English into which Singer reworked his stories.
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By Zackary Sholem Berger
Hilary Putnam is one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers, known worldwide for his many contributions to diverse areas of philosophy, from ethics to philosophy of mind to the relationship between science and the real world. Equally well known among his peers is his willingness to revise and reflect on his own beliefs.
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The Mirror in the Mikveh
If Rabbis Are Allowed To Intermarry, Get Ready for the Non-Jewish Rabbi
Top 10 Badass Mah Jongg Jews
A Moral Responsibility
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