20 Jun
2013 May-June, Arts & Culture, Jewish World

Heart to Heart with Elie Wiesel

Not long ago, I sat down with Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Moment co-founder Elie Wiesel for a heart-to-heart talk. In 2011, he underwent emergency open-heart surgery, and in the following year, even the walk from his desk to the couch seemed to tire him. His already soft-spoken voice had become a little too quiet. I hadn’t seen him for a few months and was delighted to see that he once again exuded energy and his eyes had his slightly mischievous sparkle. Back to himself, he was ready to talk about his recent brush with death—which he writes about in his new book, Open Heart.—Nadine Epstein ______________________________________________   "There I wasn’t alone... Here, I was alone in this condition. I knew I could die. I had, of course, as I say, lived in death over there. But...

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20 May
2013 May-June, Arts & Culture

Book Review | Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt

Saul Friedländer Yale University Press 2013, $25.00, pp. 200 “Dearest Max, my last request: everything I leave behind me…in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches, and so on, to be burned unread…Yours, Franz Kafka” Dearest Max was Max Brod, who famously decided not to obey the last wish of his best friend, who died in 1924 of tuberculosis one month short of his 41st birthday. Brod, an ambitious and prolific writer himself, would have long since been forgotten had it not been for his role as the custodian, editor and publisher of Kafka’s writings. Brod escaped the Nazis on the last train out of Prague, carrying two suitcases filled with the material he was supposed to burn.The works he saved and edited made Kafka the most important literary figure of the middle of...

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20 May
2013 May-June, Arts & Culture, Jewish Word, Jewish World

Jewish Word | Ghetto

Venice, Harlem and Beyond   There are few words that so acutely symbolize discrimination as “ghetto.” It was coined in Venice in 1516 to refer to a segregated, enclosed area of a city where Jews were forced to live. It then came to signify any place where Jews were concentrated and from there an urban minority slum perpetuated by social and economic reasons rather than legal fiat.  In between, the Nazis adopted the term to denote their horrific provisional way stations on the road to extermination. Ghetto’s etymology is uncertain, according to The Oxford English Dictionary. Some scholars claim that it comes from the Italian word gheto or ghet, slag or waste in Venetian dialect. Some argue it originates from gettare, meaning pouring or casting metal, and refers to a foundry where slag was stored on the Venetian...

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20 May
2013 May-June, Arts & Culture

Children’s Book Author Interview: Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen, author of the classic The Devil’s Arithmetic, is the renowned author of more than 300 books. Her books, poems and stories have won many awards, including two Nebulas and the Caldecott Medal. I chat with Yolen about her inspiration for The Devil's Arithmetic, her favorite childhood novels and why so many kids ask her about J.K. Rowling.—Nadine Epstein    What inspired The Devil’s Arithmetic? Did you know any survivors? I did, but that’s not what started it. I had lunch with one of my editors, who happened to be a rabbi’s wife. She said, “I know you’re Jewish, but you don’t write about anything Jewish—it’s time you start.” I had grown up very non-observant, until I was 13, when I said I wanted to be confirmed. I had never really thought about writing a Jewish book...

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10 May
2013 May-June, Arts & Culture

Poem | Erica Jong

Not With a Bang but With a Whimper (My mother died & the world did not end)   How I wish it were apocalyptically dramatic— the end of the world Armageddon, burning books of fierce fire, horsemen with spears, flaming suns sprung from trebuchets, dire projections of our stoned fantasy lives, awake, dreaming, dreaming our dreaming selves. But no. Breath slips away on pneumonia’s sweet white wings, eyes fix on the snowy park & can’t see but a blur of white, eggshell, cream, buttermilk & smeared smog. Both parents calmly left this world of pain. My one regret was not to be there for Papa, Daddy as I was for Mother, Mom, Mommy (as I never called her) Eda Mirsky Mann the glorious, great mother of daughters but no son. Painter, illustrator, costume-maker, designer of dresses she could cut & sew. Designer of tsatskelech, beloved wife, daughter, sister, who never knew how loved she was (or did she?), flirt & party-maker for her pals, painters, musicians, actors, but never crass colleagues of her husband’s trade. O how...

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09 May
2013 May-June, Arts & Culture, Jewish World

Jewish Routes | Washington, DC

In Celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month Jews have had a major presence in Washington, DC, ever since young land speculator Isaac Polock arrived in 1795 and built six stately homes along present-day Pennsylvania Avenue in Foggy Bottom. These buildings would later house celebrated Americans such as President James Madison and Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward. Jewish merchants, many from Germany, soon followed, selling goods from small establishments along 7th Street to meet the needs of the residents of the nation’s new capital on the Potomac. At first the trickle was slow. In 1843, there weren’t even 10 men to make a minyan at the funeral of the infant son of Captain Alfred Mordechai, the commander of the Washington Arsenal. But by 1852, Jews were plentiful enough to found the city’s first synagogue, the Orthodox...

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