On page 229 of the NYRB edition of Der Nister's Di Misphoke Mashber, history intercedes, and readers are introduced to concrete, historic signifiers. We are left wondering: did history invade a magical world, or was the magical inserting itself into history? That is what literature is.
Oh, David Malouf! I would your parenthesis were wholly, incontrovertibly Truth!
So is "N" actually Berdichev, as your punctuation emphatically suggests? Is it? Really? We don't know. And that is what literature is.
8/25/10
Pilsudski
90 years ago today, Jewish fighters assisted the Polish army in defending Warsaw against the invading Reds. Jozef Pilsudski was instrumental in granting Jews more rights, and they joined the army as a sign of Polish allegiance, but also as Jews who wanted vengeance on Cossacks.
Wiki's page on the battle in 1920.
Wiki's page on the battle in 1920.
8/20/10
Zionism as Secular Messianism
Is sort of how the ultra-frummies see it, and I sort of agree.
"Yet Heilman and Friedman also argue that Lubavitch was in competition with Zionism, which it saw as a "false Messiah [that] was going to steal the faith of the Jews that Lubavitchers had been worrking so hard to arouse.'"
In America, there is such a big fucking deal (is this an acronym yet?) made by the Orthodox (and even the Conservatives) about what their "less religious" kin do with their lives. But do they care what Israelis do? I appreciate the fluidity of Jewish religiousness in America, yet Israel in contrast seems to possess a strongly demarcated binary.
Why is Reform more odious than atheism/secularism? And why is Judaism the only religion that missionizes or proselytizes to its own people?
"Yet Heilman and Friedman also argue that Lubavitch was in competition with Zionism, which it saw as a "false Messiah [that] was going to steal the faith of the Jews that Lubavitchers had been worrking so hard to arouse.'"
In America, there is such a big fucking deal (is this an acronym yet?) made by the Orthodox (and even the Conservatives) about what their "less religious" kin do with their lives. But do they care what Israelis do? I appreciate the fluidity of Jewish religiousness in America, yet Israel in contrast seems to possess a strongly demarcated binary.
Why is Reform more odious than atheism/secularism? And why is Judaism the only religion that missionizes or proselytizes to its own people?
8/19/10
Rosenzweig Rules
And is now the major influence behind how I read fiction and my potential master's thesis.
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