Stephen Hazan Arnoff
By Stephen Hazan Arnoff
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Culture Addicted to Aggadah
Drunken Angel By Alan Kaufman Viva Editions, 464 pages, $25 Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood By Peter Bebergal Soft Skull Press, 232 pages, $15.95 Jewish culture has always sought a balance between texts of the halachic, or legal realm, and those of the Aggadah, or narrative. Not only does the Aggadah explain…
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The Schmooze Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!
Seventy does not mean old or young. As Bob Dylan says in Floater: The old men ’round here, sometimes they get On bad terms with the younger men But old, young, age don’t carry weight It doesn’t matter in the end In the imagination of the Jewish sages of Late Antiquity, 70 means quality, not…
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Culture Joshua Foer’s Memory Palace
MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF REMEMBERING EVERYTHING By Joshua Foer The Penguin Press, 320 pages, $26.95 In his intriguing first book, “Moonwalking With Einstein,” Joshua Foer takes on the task of explaining the history of memory, its current state and how he entered the world of competitive recollection. He surveys the meaning…
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Culture Understanding the Myth and Music of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan in America By Sean Wilentz Doubleday, 400 pages, $28.95 Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 By Greil Marcus PublicAffairs, 512 Pages, $29.95 Choose almost any critical approach — biographical, political, religious, literary, musical, philosophical or historical — and chances are it already has been used to try to explain Bob Dylan and…
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Culture Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet
Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet By Seth Rogovoy Scribner, 336 pages, $26.00 In writing “Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet,” what he describes as a “Jewish biography” of Bob Dylan, Seth Rogovoy joins an ever-growing guild of critics and thinkers who have attempted to offer definitive interpretations of one of the most purposefully elusive and iconic…
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Culture Jesus, Bob: To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest
Of all the intangible elements contributing to Bob Dylan’s sustaining genius — prodigious recall of the breadth and depth of American song; a restless, creative spirit, and abiding intellectual curiosity — none has been more powerful than his ability to confound expectations. Pop vocalists on the radio were not supposed to sing through their noses,…
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