JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
For most of his life, London-born poet Stephen Spender (1909–1995) felt close ties to the Jewish people; he himself was one-quarter Jewish (his mother, Violet Schuster, was from a Jewish family originally from Frankfurt), but his 1941 marriage to Natasha Litvin, a pianist from a Lithuanian Jewish refugee family, strengthened the connection. This is affirmed…
Each Thursday, The Arty Semite features excerpts and reviews of the best contemporary Jewish poetry. This week, Rodger Kamenetz introduces the poetry of Samuel Menashe. This piece originally appeared on December 5, 2003, as part of the Forward’s Psalm 151 series. It is being published here online for the first time. Every death before mine…
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