This week’s announcement that Jewish-American writer Louise Glück has received the Nobel Prize in Literature is cause for celebration during a decidedly difficult season. Glück, who is widely regarded as one of the most gifted lyrical poets of our time, is the first American woman poet ever to have received this honor.
“There are 16 million documents in the Vatican waiting to be read. Maybe one day we will get a deeper understanding of the profound moral questions raised in the film about complicity and silence. It is not only Jews who need answers but also Catholics, who must ask themselves why their church failed to uphold Catholic principles of love and mercy. “
Alicia Ostriker’s new collection comprises selected poems from seven previous volumes. Ostriker has been an important poet for the past 45 years.
If you live long enough, you will notice a paradox of aging: Diminishment of memory can sometimes go hand in hand with a greater capacity for complexity and for the kind of revelation that can be seen only through shadow.
I learned photography from the streetcar man. “Windows to life,” Mr. Stilson had professed. “Humanity on paper.”
A woman sprawls face-down on a table, her face in a breakfast dish and a banana peel near her knee. Soon she wakes and arises with jerky but highly choreographed movements coordinated with a whimsical soundtrack. She turns on the television, a Japanese announcer appears, shuffling papers, and she quickly shuts it off. As she turns away, the television flicks back on of its own accord, and we’ve entered the slightly magical but recognizable world of an Etgar Keret story, recently made into a short film.
The English word atonement sounds abstract / And kind of Latin, but really it’s just “at one.”
Jews have lived in Ethiopia for centuries, but over the past decades, the majority have emigrated to Israel, most in the well-known airlifts of Operations Moses (1984) and Solomon (1991). Now some 140,000 are citizens. Those left behind in Addis Ababa and Gondar languish in dire conditions, vividly illustrated in the beautifully shot film.
Love, Laughter and Tears: Theodore Bikel’s The City of Light with Aimee Ginsburg Bikel. This zoominar is part of the Martha’s Vineyard Jewish Book Festival, in partnership with Moment Magazine, the Chilmark Library and the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.
