At First Glance Archive
Welcome to At First Glance. Here you will find quick takes by the CLAL faculty on new books, articles and movies, new music and fashions and on cultural trends more generally. Here we will keep you abreast of what we, in our journeys around the country, find most interesting and notable in Jewish and general culture. And, in just a few sentences, we will try to indicate why. Every other week you will find something new on this page.
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The Essential Klezmer New!
By Seth Rogovoy
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2000
Rogovoy’s new book on Klezmer has got a discography that is nothing short of a
machaye! While the first 150 pages of his book guide you through the story of
Klezmer’s roots and rebirth -- from Eastern Europe to the immigrant musicians Tarras
and Brandwein to the Klezmorim, Kapelye, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band in the 1970s,
(a topic now familiar to most Jewish music lovers), his last hundred pages or so are truly
essential - and include the late 90s wave of jazz/avant-garde klezmer exploration that few
others have chronicled. When it comes down to his desert island list of ten klez albums,
he weighs in on the classic side, but throws in a John Zorn and Klezmatics album for good
measure. (I would have thrown in an Andy Statman and King Django) What is clear in these
pages is that Rogovoy knows Jewish music, and when he places his hechsher on an album,
it’s worth the seventeen shekels.
Daniel Brenner
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The Family Orchard
By Nomi Eve
Knopf, 2000
“. . .if I had to choose a beginning,” the Prologue opens, “. . . I would
tell you that there is no beginning and then I would tell you that there are many ends. .
. . . and later I would tell you that the beginning is in my father’s trees.”
Indeed, although Eve’s meandering, magic-tinged chronicle of a family over
generations often reads beautifully—like a Jewish, diasporic 100 Years of
Solitude—it ultimately seems less like a narrative, a story with beginning and end,
and more like an extended meditation on its title metaphor. As it follows the fortunes of
a family from Eastern Europe to the land that would become Israel and finally to the
United States, the novel insists that what connects the branches to the roots, and to
other branches—or to other trees, since Eve’s book makes the metaphor
plural—is stories, the melding of fact and fiction that makes up our connection to
the past.
Eve is interested in representing on the page the ways family stories are multilayered,
grafted together—like fruit trees—out of reminiscences, textual documents,
photos, and imaginings, and so her family epic of migration and home, coupling and
children, life and loss, is presented in a postmodern, kaleidescopic pastiche. The
understated family histories written by the narrator’s father, for instance, are
juxtaposed with detailed personal tales the narrator spins; a schematic image of a family
tree that grows as the book progresses stands in contrast to particular, vivid images that
are artifacts rather than illustrations of the story—a picture of a tattooed woman
the narrator’s mother finds in an antiquarian bookstore, for instance. Eve’s own
writerly grafting is not as seamless as we might wish. After the first few sections, the
book takes on a cumbersome, self-indulgent repetitiveness. Characters sometimes seem flat,
no more than vehicles for metaphors of the book’s storytelling project—Miriam
whose weaving casts spells; David whose baking seems to create magical forms; Rebecca
whose drawings reveal the truth of people’s lives. Self-referential storytelling can
be compelling, but Eve often misses the trees for the orchard, getting carried away with
form while losing that ineffable something that gives stories and characters life, motion,
oomph, that makes you care what happens next. Eve could have used a little more beginning
and ending. Still, it is in many ways a beautiful book—not least because it is
stunningly designed—and a poignant reflection on our penchant to connect to, create,
and understand ourselves through a family history, a deeply personal past.
Libby Garland
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God-Talk in America
By Phyllis A. Tickle
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997
This book tells the story of people figuring out how to be true to themselves and
experience real community. It’s not about individualism that mitigates against
community or communities that erode our individual spiritual identities. It’s about
communities that are arising by helping people meet their individual spiritual needs. This
book is not about theology, the study of something, where the student stands outside
something fixed and studies it (which is the religion most of us were taught regardless of
what religion it was.) God-Talk is about conversation -- open, inclusive,
non-hierarchical, searching. The author understands that this conversation can happen in
as many ways as there are people. This book addresses the fact that as each of us does our
own spiritual dance, we can share a common dance floor.
Brad Hirschfield
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The Cruise
By Bennett Miller (director)
VHS, 76 minutes
Artisan Entertainment, 1999
http://www.thecruise.com
Meet Timothy "Speed" Levitch, a poetic and arresting New York City tour guide.
This documentary explores Speed's philosophy or derekh (way in life), the
"cruise" - an aesthetic journeying through life which resists the matrices of
conventional expectations and social constraints in a spirit of freedom and openness. Two
scenes stood out for me. Speed talking of his desire to connect the people who take his
three-hour double-decker tour to the transcendence that surrounds them and the story Speed
tells in Central Park of a Lammud-Vav-nik -- one of the thirty-six hidden righteous
persons whose goodness upholds the world -- whom the Baal Shem Tov (the 18th century
progenitor of Hasidism) failed to recognize. Artfully shot in black and white, to be
watched in "cruise" mode, this is a poignant movie about a post-modern wandering
maggid (a storyteller).
Robert Rabinowitz
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Mother Said
By Hal Sirowitz
Random House ,1996
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I was reading this book of poetry. So I did
both. In his poems Hal Sirowitz has multiplied the stereotypical Jewish mother
exponentially. His protagonist has an opinion on everything, advice for every situation
and a logic that just can’t be argued with. For example:
Chopped-Off Arm
Don’t stick your arm out the window,/ Mother said. Another car can sneak up/ behind
us, & chop it off. Then your father/ will have to stop, stick the severed piece/ in
the trunk, & drive you to the hospital./ It’s not like the parts of your
telescope that snap back on. A doctor will have to sew it./ You won’t be able to wear
short sleeves./ You won’t want anyone to see the stitches.
Though his poems seem simple on the surface, they contain layers of depth and complexity
about family in America. Hal Sirowitz’s poems are funny, sad, poignant, accessible,
crafty, and well crafted.
Janet R. Kirchheimer
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The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America
By Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen
Indiana University Press, 2000
Drawing on interviews with some of the “moderately affiliated” Jews who make up
the largest group of American Jewry, Cohen and Eisen describe the emergence of a
“postmodern” American Jewishness, enacted and understood increasingly as a
privately chosen journey carried out primarily in the spheres of family and self, even
while it is rooted in a continuing notion of essential, inborn Jewish identity. The
authors present a compelling portrait of mainstream American Jewish identity that
complicates anxious, simplified narratives of decline or assimilation, although ultimately
they seem pessimistic about the vitality of a Judaism that rejects communal institutions
and public culture in favor of more private experiences.
Libby Garland
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Jews in America: A Contemporary Reader
Edited by Roberta Rosenberg Farber and Chaim I. Waxman
Brandeis University Press, 1999
This collection of essays by the major social scientists working on Jewish demography
paints a picture of Jewish assimilation amid a culture of individualism. Using
quantitative data from a number of surveys throughout the 1990's the authors suggest that
Jewish institutions must shore up Jewish identity by promoting day school education and by
winning Jews "back" into the fold.
Shari Cohen
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The Beginnings of Jewishness
By Shaye J.D. Cohen
University of California Press, 1999
Quite simply the most comprehensive account of the role of shifts in social reality in
transforming Judean identity- which was tied to a state and geographical location as well
as to culture, religion and ethnicity- into the portable Jewish identity of rabbinic
Judaism. The closing chapter makes explicit the claim for which CLAL has long argued; that
the shifts in social reality in the modern and post-modern periods are likely to have
parallel transformative implications. Very comprehensive, even if some of its claims are
made too exhaustively and with just a touch more force than the historical sources quite
justify.
Robert Rabinowitz
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The Social Life of Information
By John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
Harvard Business School Press, 2000
There has been much debate, in Derekh CLAL and at the Jewish Public Forum among other
places, about the impact of the new technology on the way in which we construct our
identities and communities. There are the techno-optimists, with their holy slogans of
disintermediation, demassification and decentralization. But there are also the
nay-sayers, bravely bearing the accusation of Ludditism when they point out the continued
importance of real, face-to-face interaction. This book lets loose repeated skeptical
salvoes at the prophets of technological transformation who focus on disembodied
information at the expense of the "social life" of information amongst us
clumsily embodied humans who communicate in many delightfully idiosyncratic and hard to
define ways that cannot be captured via the new technology. Neverthless, it does attempt
to steer between the two positions. The key distinction that emerges is between
"communities of practice" which are characterized by informal interaction
through geographical proximity and "networks of practice" through which
information can be shared via the new technology. The authors argue quite convincingly
that while the new technology could indeed have quite transformative impact on our
society, the changes are not likely to proceed in the utopian directions propounded by the
techno-optimists. Despite the fact that some of the book seems a little too close to a
first draft submitted under pressure of deadlines, it is a very thoughtful and accessible
read.
Robert Rabinowitz
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The Mercy
By Philip Levine
Alfred A. Knopf, 2000
The Mercy is a wonderful collection of narrative poetry about the American experience, and
in particular the Detroit of Levine’s youth. The book is dedicated to the memory of
his mother and the title poem about her is stunning and haunting. I cannot get it out of
my head. Levine who has received the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize writes
about many different kinds of journeys and his poems stay with you. You will find yourself
wanting to read these poems again and again.
Janet R. Kirchheimer
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The Holocaust in American Life
ByPeter Novick
Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Historian Peter Novick chronicles the meaning of the Holocaust for American Jews and
American society more generally, tracing the shift from silence in the postwar decades to
increasing cultural centrality during the seventies, eighties, and nineties, culminating
in the building of the Holocaust museum on the Mall in Washington, DC. He is highly
critical of central role the Holocaust has played in organized Jewish life, arguing that
this represents a last gasp by Jewish institutions to find a unifying experience for an
increasingly assimilated community, and a bid for the kind of victimhood that confers
status in American multiculturalism. This focus on the Holocaust, he argues, has kept Jews
from coming to terms with what Jewishness means in the context of their power and
affluence in contemporary America.
Shari Cohen
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Caldecott
By Bob Funt
Higganum Hill Books, 2000
Named for the 19th century artist whose sketches adorn the work by Higganum Hill Books,
this book has been rightly praised for its spiritual honesty. There are numerous poems of
Jewish interest, including The Street, about Crown Heights, The Red Thread, about my twin
sons, and The Poetry Angel, the book’s finale, a riotous tale of an angel who
rejoices in the works of unpublished writers.
Many of the other poems address the world that the author inhabits the seedier side of
working class Miami. There are also ruminations on the craft of poetry from the
perspective of a true outsider, one who would truly prefer to publish on poolroom
chalkboards.
Jewish poets, from Pinsky on down, as well as readers should rejoice over this work. It
retains what Jews have long prided themselves on being -- counter-culture activists,
non-conformists, observers of beauty in an ugly world, champions of the downtrodden, and
damn funny.
Daniel Brenner
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Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
By E.G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
(Oxford University Press, 1999)
I have been reading Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 for over a year, and I am
barely more than half way through. How can this be? Well, the book is 1416 pages long, far
too huge to carry along on the subway or on vacation. So I have made it my shabbos
reading. And there are many other things to do on shabbos afternoon, including eating,
visiting, sleeping, and reading other books. So it has taken me a long time to progress
through Gotham. Yet I have returned time and again to this magnificent volume and have
enjoyed it immensely.
Gotham is a political, social, religious, gender and literary history of New York City
from its beginnings (literally—it is also a geological history) to the end of the
19th century. I cannot begin to enumerate the many things I have learned from its pages,
including the origins of the “lunch hour,” the real conditions of life before
plumbing and garbage collection, the history of New York’s oldest synagogues, the
experiences of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman in old New York, and on and on. To read
this book is to go on a multi-sensory journey through time. It always pays to look back
and see where we have been. And the streets of the city that would become the capital of
the modern world are a good place to start such a journey. I cannot recommend this book
enough.
David Kraemer
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Generation J
By Lisa Schiffman
(Harper Collins, 1999)
Generation J is a thoughtful and thought provoking meditation on the intricacies of Jewish
identity and its many forms. Lisa Schiffman chronicles her own on-going struggle to
understand Jewishness in general and her own Jewishness in particular. Schiffman’s
expansive approach to the subject of identity reflects a commitment to the plurality of
experiences and expressions that comprise a meaningful Jewish life. With the passion of an
explorer, the instincts of a Talmudist, and the sensitivity of one who knows what it means
to journey in many worlds, Schiffman challenges us to “recast our questions” and
“to invent the future.”
Jennifer Krause
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Being Jewish
By Ari Goldman
(Simon and Schuster, 2000)
Back in the 1980's, a Jewish reporter for The New York Times took a sabbatical to study at
the Harvard Divinity School. Lo and behold, he discovered that the study of other
religions was neither dangerous for nice Jewish boys and girls, nor a sure path to
conversion, nor a sign that the searcher had failed to invest enough energy into Judaism
to discover its seductive power.
Ari Goldman's breakthrough book, "The Search for God at Harvard," raised up a
firestorm of controversy that can hardly be imagined today. Nowadays, Jewish parents don't
panic when the kids they've packed off to college take such courses as "Intro to
Buddhism." They don't even ask, "But is it good for the Jews?" It's become
an axiom: study of "the other" (often to fulfill the course requirement to learn
"a culture other than your own" or "a non-western religion"), leads to
a deeper understanding and appreciation of one's own community and beliefs....
Vanessa Ochs
(To read the complete review, click here)
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My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging
By Rachel Naomi Remen
(Riverhead Books, 2000)
String of Pearls: Recipes for Living Well in the Real World
By JoAnna M. Lund
(Putnam, 2000)
A Place Like Any Other: Sabbath Blessings
By Molly Wolf
(Doubleday, 2000)
Some of the godmothers in our lives are those assigned to us at birth. Others gravitate
toward us, or we toward them. And then there are the godmothers whom we discover between
the covers of books. Molly Wolf, JoAnna Lund, and Rachel Naomi Remen are three such
literary godmothers whose new books weave webs of wisdom. They offer doses of stark,
sometimes bitter reality, which are accompanied with equal doses of the good stuff: Call
it hope, love, or meaning in the face of its apparent absence. Or call it God.
Molly Wolf, author of "A Place Like Any Other: Sabbath Blessings," a collection
of bare bones, plain-talk essays, ends her advice, invariably, with a glimpse into how God
is revealed in the everyday. Wolf began writing about God's presence in her own life for a
couple of internet mailing lists. The best of these popular weekly entries are organized
according to the seasons of her Canadian year, one of much mud and long snowy winters.
Wolf lives a life "without interesting incident," she admits, in an untidy
Victorian home in an unpicturesque Canadian province.
Vanessa Ochs
(To read the complete review, click here)
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Black Elk Speaks: As told through John G. Neidhardt
By Nicholas Black Elk
(University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
This book is a book of multiple stories. It is the life story of Black Elk, (1863-1950) a
Lakota Sioux visionary and healer told in spare and evocative language by the poet, John
G. Neihardt. It is a story set against the expansion to the West in the late 1800’s.
Reading like a sacred text, it is a story containing nuance, multiple layers of meaning
and insights. It is also the story of a man reflecting on and sharing his life and
religious visions. Black Elk lived in a time of immense change for his people and their
way of life, religion and culture. His story is the story of the struggle to come to terms
with one way of life ending and another beginning. Told with honesty and a deep reverence
for the spirit, this book was first published in 1932, reprinted in 1961 and 1972, and has
now been reprinted in a special edition. It is not to be overlooked.
Janet Kirchheimer
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DYING WELL Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life
By Ira Byock, M.D.
(Riverhead Books, 1997)
Ira Byock’s moving non-fiction work on dying begins with a portrait of his
father’s last year of life. So much of the shifts in Jewish life are contained in it
. There’s a dying door to door businessman interacting with his successful
professional son, a generation which believed in the infallibility of medicine and a
generation which brings technological advance into question, a generation of secrets and a
generation that tells-all. For this story alone, this book is worthwhile - it delves into
the decisions one makes at the end of life, the way that a family reacts, and the reality
of loss. Byock, a physician with ample experience with those in the last stages of life,
launches from his father’s story to speak of the many cases he has encountered as a
hospice doctor. What results is a powerful and evocative picture of death in America, and
a passionate plea for palliative care.
Daniel Brenner
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For Common Things
By Jedidiah Purdy
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
Jedidiah Purdy's For Common Things advances the much needed, but rarely heard argument for
the deep relatedness of personal meaning and private virtue on the one hand, and public
culture and common good on the other. Ultimately, there is no healthy way to create
personal good without taking the common good into account as well. In a world that often
pits these concerns against each other, Purdy understands that any argument for one
without the other will ultimately fall short. This is an important book.
Brad Hirschfield
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His Brother's Keeper
By Yossi Beilin
(Shocken Books, 2000)
I am a big fan of Yossi Beilin: architect of Oslo, proponent of separation of Church and
State in Israel, leader of the public movement to withdraw from Lebanon and catalyst for
the creation of Birthright Israel. This book advocates a redefinition of the relationship
between Israel and the United States. Beilin’s own suggestions as to what it might
look like in the future are startlingly conventional but his debunking of the current
relationship is superb and he does understand that the Israel-US relationship cuts to the
heart of what it will mean to be Jewish in the coming century. Also, it is good to know
that at least one Israeli politician is actually thinking intelligent and informed
thoughts about us out here in the Diaspora.
Robert Rabinowitz
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Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
By Anne Lamott
(Doubleday & Co, 1995)
A joyous book for anyone who writes, wishes to begin and even those who have no desire to
write. While giving instructions about writing, she writes a no-holds-barred book about
her life, struggles and spirituality. For Lamott, writing and life are journeys; and she
takes us on a funky and folksy ride. If you are trying to write your way into your
spiritual life, or not, this book is a definite must.
Janet R. Kirchheimer
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Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
By Sherry Turkle
(Simon and Schuster, 1995)
In this fascinating book, Sherry Turkle – a Professor of the Sociology of Science at
MIT and a clinical psychologist -- explores the ways in which our identities are affected
by communicating in cyberspace. Read it to find out how on-line communication enables
people to expand their sense of self while experimenting with a multiplicity of virtual
identities. Turkle also explores how computers change our very sense of what is real.
Shari Cohen
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Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex
Edited by Melvin Jules Bukiet
(Broadway Books, 1999)
This book has a great cover! White background, large pickle and a review quote that
promises lots of “shtupping” and “laughing”. Unfortunately, the inside
is more anxiety than ecstasy. From Ozick’s tortured Pagan Rabbi who wishes to escape
his deformed Jewish psyche by coupling with a tree to the 32 pages that Harold Brodkey
spends trying to give Orra an orgasm, this book suggests that it ain’t fun inside the
average Jewish bed. I felt like shouting: “Jews, for heaven’s sake, just let go,
ease up, enjoy yourselves!” A good read.
Robert Rabinowitz
Have you seen, or read, or listened to a movie, an article or a piece of music mentioned here? What is your quick take? Are there other cultural items that have caught your eye that you would like to call to the attention of others in the CLAL on line community?
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