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.
“We decide not to send the wedding invitations. Instead, I spend the day canceling the venue, florist, photographer and the princess style dress fitting while hot tears flow onto the unsent invitations.”
In September, the Hungarian publication Népszava reported that the sole institution in Hungary that is dedicated to preserving the record of the Hungarian Holocaust, the Páva Street Holocaust Memorial Center, may be coerced to collaborate with three other Hungarian research institutes. These three institutes, which are controlled by the government, have engaged in Holocaust distortion and/or employed anti-Semites.
Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy, coauthors of their recently released book Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People are in conversation with Moment Deputy Editor Sarah Breger. Sharansky is a former political prisoner in the Soviet Union who went on to become an Israeli politician. Troy is an American presidential historian and leading Zionist activist.
On Sunday, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC, celebrated its Red Mass, an annual event held on the Sunday before the first Monday in October when the Supreme Court term begins
The Israeli politician Ami Ayalon has been head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, as well as commander-in-chief of the Navy and a Member of Knesset for the Labor Party. Just two years after the conclusion of his Shin Bet service, he played a prominent role in the 2012 film The Gatekeepers, in which six former Israeli security chiefs argued that coming to some accommodation with the Palestinians was an imperative for Israeli security. In this memoir, Ayalon, now 75, looks back on his personal and political journey while stressing the importance of listening and absorbing the way the different sides have experienced recent history. He spoke with Dan Raviv for Moment.
Harvard law professor Noah Feldman’s book about Arab political self-determination and self-destruction is called The Arab Winter: A Tragedy. And he really means it. Grief emanates from every line of this reevaluation of the Arab Spring, which revisits the hope followed by disaster in Egypt and Syria; the utopian Islamism that produced the hellish dystopia of ISIS; and, perhaps most painful, the success in Tunisia that showed the other tragedies were not inevitable.
“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. “
“She was a role model to the Jewish nation, to the American nation—and to our world. To older people. To middle-aged people. To young people.”
“Now, when the world feels too unpredictable, I remind myself that sometimes the exact thing we need is something we would never think to ask for, and that sometimes it—or he—is right around the corner.”
Challah is in its moment, having unseated sourdough as the baking task of the pandemic. Challah’s “moment” has lasted centuries, but now it also helps us place ourselves in time, reminding us that it is Friday, as one unreal day flows into the next. We feel a sense of community, a reassuring rhythm as Shabbat approaches, knowing that in Jewish homes all around the world flour is being measured.
Some of Elie’s friends and former students join in conversation and song to mark what would have been his 92nd birthday.
Featuring: Rabbi Ariel Burger, author, Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom; Nadine Epstein, editor-in-chief, Moment Magazine; Cantor Deborah Katchko-Gray, Congregation Shir Shalom, Connecticut; Matthew Lazar, founder & director, Zamir Choral Foundation; Cantor Joseph Malovany, Fifth Avenue Synagogue, New York
