With publication of the second and final volume of his monumental biography of Saul Bellow, Zachary Leader, a professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton in London, has completed a decade-long immersion in Bellow’s life and letters.
The Anti-Semitism Monitor reports anti-Semitic incidents around the world by country and date on a weekly basis.
Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land by Amos Oz Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2018, 138 pp, $15.31 Amos Oz’s modest
Rivka Carmi In 2006, Rivka Carmi became the president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), making her the first
n the 1946 film The Big Sleep, based on the Raymond Chandler mystery of the same name, Carmen—the promiscuous, drug-addicted younger sister of Lauren Bacall’s character—sizes up Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart, and asks him, “What are you, a prizefighter?” Bogart responds, “No, I’m a shamus.” “What’s a shamus?” she inquires. “It’s a private detective,” he answers. Yes, Bogart is using the Yiddish version—more popularly spelled “shammes”—of the Hebrew word, “shamash.”
For all its political sophistication and savviness, the Jewish community still takes great interest in the bottom line: How many Jews got in?
In the year since the Harvey Weinstein case hit the headlines and the #MeToo movement exploded in every direction, I’ve felt increasingly distressed by the number of prominent Jewish men among the accused. Aside from the obvious names—from Senator Al Franken to conductor James Levine, from actors and journalists to Judge Alex Kozinski—one that particularly troubles me is scholar-macher Steven M. Cohen, the sociologist whose in-depth surveys have helped American Jews understand ourselves better, and who happens to be my long-term acquaintance.
The first time I came face-to-face with Jewish magic was when I moved to Israel in my early 20s. It
Gender in Hebrew—as in Spanish, Hindi, French and other languages—is intimately woven into word construction. “Hebrew goes a lot further,” says Erez Levon, a professor of sociolinguistics at Queen Mary University of London who focuses on questions of gender and sexuality. He explains that the language is particularly restrictive because gender is conveyed through masculine or feminine verb, adjective and adverb endings and almost every other part of speech.
The First Book of Jewish Jokes Edited by Elliott Oring Translated by Michaela Lang Indiana University Press 2018, 176 pp,
Abby Stein is the first openly transgender ex-Hasid and a lightning rod for Hasidic trans-youth.
