Jake Marmer
By Jake Marmer
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Culture Talmud vs. Anna Akhmatova
Those thus inclined will be hearing Parshat Vayera in shul this shabbos. Among the big stories inhabiting the text, the tale of Lot’s wife is allotted but a single sentence. She turns around to look at Sodom, and becomes a pillar of salt. Midrash, which calls her Idit, provides different opinions about the events. One…
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Culture Gold, Silver and Rubber: Village Voice’s ‘Best of NYC’ Awards
“S’iz shver tzu zain a yid,” runs an old proverb: it’s hard to be a Jew; yes, but is it hip? Definitely has been, at times (see this blog for two notable testimonies), but, if you hold Village Voice’s “Best of NYC Awards” to be the barometer of coolness, in 2009 we’re coming in only…
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Culture Jennifer Kronovet’s "Awayward" is Way Inward
Reading Jennifer Kronovet’s recent collection “Awayward,” you may think she’s translating from another language, transposing foreign syntactical structures, turns of phrase, rhythms, tonalities — a whole unfamiliar psyche — into English. Kronovet’s speculative original is forever inaccessible, and can only be known through her translation. “Known”, though, would be to overestimate its accessibility because, while…
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Life The Kafka Vitamin
A recent study published in Psychological Science claims that absurdist literature stimulates the mind, heightening its capacity and potential, both at the time of reading — and afterwards. To prove this, 40 people participated in an experiment where they read Kafka’s “Country Doctor” and were observed by scientists Travis Proulx and Steven J. Heine. The…
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Life Joy Ladin and Her Transmigration Poems
“The author is dead!” has been a consistent postmodernist refrain discouraging readers from reducing meanings of literary works to mere biographical outlines of their authors. Joy Ladin’s “Transmigration Poems,” published this summer, goes against such a worldview, as the poems of the collection are intensely personal, confessional. The poems bring autobiography to the heart of…
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Life What Odds Amos Oz for Nobel Prize?
So far Israel has had eight Nobel winners, S. Y. Agnon (1966) being the only recipient in the literature category. Yet, according to the Guardian, bets are being placed on Amos Oz as this year’s top choice for the award. Amos Oz, born Amos Klausner, is conveniently turning 70 this year and this would be…
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Life Adam Schonbrun: Poet from Tzfat
If you think that everyone, living in the Nothern Israeli town of Tzfat is either an ecstatic kabbalist wrapped in hippie scarves or painter with a blowing glass gallery — or a combination of both — you’re not too far from the truth. Yet, among these characters, there lives a completely different sort of a…
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Culture The Shrine Whose Shape I Am
At first, Babylonian yeshivas of Sura and Pumpedisa were full of poets. Every wagging finger, every dipping thumb, belonged to a poet; the spittle of ferocious arguments was real poetry. As Shelley wrote: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” These Babylonian rabbis, composing Talmud and midrash, dreamed of legislating the myth; sensing the…
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