31 May
Arts & Culture, Latest

Philip Roth: A Writer and His People

Over the course of his remarkable career, Philip Roth received nearly every literary award imaginable. One of these prizes was an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, which he received in May 2014. The JTS degree, though, was not merely one more feather that Roth added to his magnificent literary cap; it marked the beginning of a long overdue reconciliation between a writer and his people. Now that our inimitable literary lion—our contemporary Kafka—has passed, the time has come for the rest of the Jewish people to follow suit and atone for our modern-day original literary sin. Like his novel The Ghost Writer, Roth’s autobiographical work of nonfiction The Facts recounts how a certain slice of the Jewish community repudiated Roth and indignantly accused him of “airing their dirty laundry.” In 1962,...

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18 Apr
Latest

Art, Religion and the Encounter between Two Traditions

“This is a religion. You’re entering a world with its own tradition.” Those unfamiliar with Chaim Potok’s novel My Name is Asher Lev would likely think that such a phrase would be uttered to someone thinking of converting to a different religion. In Potok’s book, however, it is said to a religious Jew thinking of becoming an artist. Potok’s now-classic tale of a Hassidic artistic prodigy has been deftly rendered as a poignant, affective stage production by writer Aaron Posner and director Gordon Edelstein at New York's Westside Theatre. As a 90-minute play performed without an intermission, it is a brisk yet moving treatment of Potok’s powerful semi-autobiographical novel. The production dramatizes the novel’s highlights and key lines while providing the audience with glimmers of insight into Asher Lev’s characters. As much as any theatrical or cinematic...

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