31 Mar
2012 May/June, Book Review, Issues, Topics

Book Review | In Love with Life—and Himself

By Alan A. Stone DucClaude Lanzmann is known on this side of the Atlantic as the Frenchman who created the monumental film, Shoah. He tells us that American Jews did not contribute a single penny to his efforts. Lanzmann traveled all over the United States, hat in hand, trying to raise money from wealthy Jews. They wanted to know what his ultimate message was going to be or, more galling to him, pontificated about what it should be. If truth be told, Lanzmann did not know exactly where his decade-long project would take him. His method was to immerse himself in the facts, talk to the experts, track down and film the Jewish survivors, the Poles who watched and the Germans who made the Holocaust happen. Only after years of this effort did he “imagine” what Shoah would be! The...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Arts, Food, Issues, Series, Talk of the Table

The Food of Great Fiction

Here a Roth, there a Stein, everywhere a Kafka—Jews are the people of the book, a group that has long prized its own erudition and literary prowess. And with good reason: It’s nearly impossible to list the most important writers of our time, or any other, without dropping some Jewish names. But one could also say that Jews are the people of the food: here a brisket, there a kreplach, everywhere a bagel. A fervor for food is often a trope of Jews in literature, a sort of shorthand for membership in the Jewish people. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby, the Jewish no-goodnik Meyer Wolfsheim is introduced at a tony restaurant with the following description: “A succulent hash arrived and Mr. Wolfsheim…began to eat with ferocious delicacy.” The tone is set from the beginning:...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Ask the Rabbis, Issues, Religion, Series, U.S. Politics

Ask The Rabbis | Will It Matter to Jews If There Is a Mormon President?

INDEPENDENT Historically, the religious affiliation of a governmental leader has never been an issue for the Jewish people, as long as the government involved was not itself oppressive. Although Jews were thoroughly and severely oppressed over more than 1,600 years by leaders with Catholic or Protestant beliefs, the Mormon Church has been extra nice to us, even going so far as to beseech God on our behalf for entry to Heaven. And although we would prefer that they cease and desist from such beseeching—namely, from baptizing us post-mortem—it’s still a far nicer gesture on their part than the historic campaigns by other Christian denominations to Christianize us by way of torture, expulsions, forced conversions and seasonal auto da fés, which often included burning us at the stake in the public square. Some Jews might see Romney’s belief system...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Arts, Issues, Jewish Word, Topics

Jewish Word | The Rabbinic Way of Fiction

By Sala Levin You may know the story: Abraham, in an effort to convince his father, Terach, that idol worship is wrong, takes a hammer and smashes the idols that his father sells. He leaves the hammer in the hand of the largest idol and tells his father that it destroyed the others in a fight. When Terach says that idols don’t have that kind of power, Abraham asks him why, in that case, he would worship them. The story is so famous that many believe it comes from the Torah. But it doesn’t. It was written by rabbis to illustrate the depth of Abraham’s conviction that idol worship was wrong. It is what’s called midrash. Derived from the Hebrew root daled, resh, shin, or drash, meaning “to seek” or “to inquire,” the word “midrash” appears only twice in...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Issues, Opinion, Topics, U.S. Politics

Marshall Breger: U.S. Citizenship: Priceless or Merely Convenient?

By Marshall Breger In 2011, Sen. Joseph Lieberman suggested that U.S. nationals, “homegrown” or otherwise, be stripped of their citizenship if they are “engaging in or purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States.” More recently, in Israel, right-wing Knesset members pushed for legislation taking away Israeli citizenship of convicted terrorists. Taking away citizenship is not something we do lightly. But these and many similar proposals force us to think about the meaning of citizenship—and whether we in America are striking the right balance between its privileges and its responsibilities. The Supreme Court has for years recognized the “priceless benefits” of citizenship, stating that it would be “difficult to exaggerate its value and importance.” In 1967, the court overturned a law revoking the U.S. citizenship of a person who had voted in a foreign (in that...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, International, Israel, Issues, Opinion, Topics

David Hazony: Israel Catches a “Flytilla” with (Serious) Satire

First off, let me be clear that I do not condone Israel’s official use of sarcasm, wit or anything else that could be construed as more entertaining than the turgid pronouncements of native English-speaking governments. Since my childhood I have been told that government and humor don’t mix. But in mid-April, when dozens of would-be “flytilla” protesters descending on Ben Gurion Airport from England, France, Belgium and other European countries were handed a letter on official stationery, written in an English that sounded an awful lot like that of the prime minister, few expected that their heartfelt protests would be so summarily, efficiently quashed. Most Israelis were more interested in the letter than in the protest itself, and with good reason. It was a lot more clever. “Dear activist,” the letter teased. “We appreciate your choosing to...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Culture, Issues, Religion

Gershom Gorenberg: An Open Letter to American Rabbis

The incident repeats itself with small variations. A rabbi somewhere in America writes to ask if I’ll come speak to his congregation about Israeli politics and my recent book, The Unmaking of Israel. Afterward I receive another email: At a meeting of the Israel Committee or the board, he has encountered worry that inviting me could offend right-wing Jews. He asks how I respond to such concerns. Here’s one abridged version of my reply: Dear ___, Oy. Your note reminds me of the apocryphal story about the new rabbi of an American Orthodox congregation who asks the shul president what he should talk about for his first Sabbath sermon. The president says, “Something to do with yiddishkeit.” “Maybe I’ll talk about Shabbos,” the rabbi says. “Well,” says the president, “a lot of our members drive to shul. They might take offense.” “All right,...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Issues, Opinion, Topics, U.S. Politics, Women

Letty Cottin Pogrebin: The War Against Women, Take Two

By Letty Cottin Pogrebin In 1959, when I was 19, there was no birth control pill, doctors did not prescribe diaphragms or IUDs for unmarried women, and abortion was a crime. So when I got pregnant, I decided to kill myself by jumping off the Triborough Bridge. If I had to carry the pregnancy to term, my life would be over anyway, I reasoned. I could never face my professors or go home to my traditional Jewish family with an “illegitimate” child. My shande (disgrace) would shame them. I’d be a single mother with a baby I didn’t want and no chance to make something of myself, let alone find a man willing to marry me. I felt doomed—until a friend told me about a doctor who, at great risk to himself, was devoting his life to performing medically safe...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, From the Editor, Issues, Opinion, Topics

From the Editor

By Nadine Epstein Hannah Brown of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, loves Moment but has a complaint: Too few women are included in Moment symposiums such as the one in January/February that asked, “What Does It Mean to Be Pro-Israel Today?” Brown is absolutely right. After doing the math, we found that in 2011, only 27 percent of our symposium participants were women. How’s that possible? You can’t chalk it up to the “old boys’ club.” After all, I am one of the few women editors of a thought-leader magazine, Jewish or not. There are a few others—including The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel and Tina Brown of Newsweek— but if you don’t believe me, check out the mastheads of The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, Tikkun or The Atlantic. Yet despite Moment’s strong roster of female editors, we still include fewer women’s voices than we would...

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31 Mar
2012 May/June, Book Review, Issues, Topics

Reviews by young readers of classic children’s books

The Book Thief By Markus Zusak The Book Thief is a beautiful but haunting story about a young girl living in Nazi Germany. I first read it several years ago and have re-read it several times, but it never fails to affect me and cause me to sit back and really think. It is one of the few stories that I can read again and again, as well as one that my entire family has read, and I really think that goes to credit the author, Markus Zusak, for creating such an engaging world and believable characters. The novel, narrated by Death, tells the story of Liesel, a girl living with foster parents, as she discovers a love of books and words in the middle of World War II. Her foster father, Hans, bonded with her as he taught...

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