Life Among the Goyim
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is edited by everyone who wants to make an entry in it, can be outrageously wrong, but it is often surprisingly reliable. If you look up Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator and star of “Da Ali G Show,” you will find him categorized under “English comedians” and “Jewish comedy.”Baron Cohen is
A Lost Chapter From the Life of Oz
If you’ve read Amos Oz’s powerful new memoir, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” in English, you missed something. I’m not referring to the “something” that is “lost in translation,” those poetic nuances that will not migrate from Hebrew to English. I mean, you missed an entire chapter.You wouldn’t
What Home Office? You’re Just a Writer!
The IRS owes me $16.35, but I’m afraid to ask them for it. So I decided to complain instead. To you.Sixteen dollars and 35 cents is what it cost me to purchase, develop and mail one roll of Kodak black-and-white, 35mm film to the IRS office in Oakland, Calif. This expenditure of my money — and time — resulted from that special form
My Grandmother Between Life and Death
Here is how the Talmud describes the life span of a man: At five years the age is reached for the study of Bible, at ten for the study of Mishnah, at thirteen for the fulfillment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of Talmud, at eighteen for marriage, at twenty for seeking a livelihood, at thirty for full strength, at forty for
Breaking the Mold of the Sitcom
Why are Jews such experts at laughter? Leo Rosten answered that question as well as anyone could when he characterized Yiddish, the quintessential Jewish tongue, as saturated with irony. When we speak about a Jewish perspective — aside from the religious one — what we often mean is an ironic view of a world known to be more complicated and
‘Yekl’ at 108: Rereading a Classic With the Children of Immigrants
Why should a somewhat stiff novella about Jewish immigrants in 1896 hold an American audience today? It shouldn’t, and if Congress had not reopened the Golden Door in 1965, ushering in the second great immigration of the 20th century, Abraham Cahan’s “Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto” might now be gathering dust on a library shelf