● No Joke: Making Jewish Humor By Ruth R. Wisse Princeton University Press, 292 pages, $24.95 As a well-known Yiddish expression has put it, “A joke is a half-truth.” Ruth Wisse presents readers of her latest work, “No Joke: Making Jewish Humor,” with half-a-book. The effective half offers a general audience analysis of literature and…
In the subculture of Christmas mixtapes Bill Adler is a very important Jew. For close to 30 years, the Manhattan music maven has put out “Xmas Jollies,” which just may be the most eclectic Yuletide mixtape on the planet. Adler has what musicians refer to as very big ears and for many of his 300…
The contentious question “Who is a Jew?” (Mi Hu Yehudi? in Hebrew) has bedeviled the Israeli legal system continuously since 1959, when the Jewish-born Polish priest Oswald Rufeisen, known as Brother Daniel, was rejected in his application for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the rejection in 1962. Since then…
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