Anti-Semitism
June 12, 2009
- Anti-Semitism has been a fact of my life for its entirety, from the first time, at age 5 or 6 I was told I was going to hell because I did not believe in Jesus, to the countless times I was called a “stupid Jew,” a kike, a baby killer, and a host of other names; from the time when, after the tent revivals rolled into town and everyone got “saved” (for the first or fifth time) the saved ...
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June 4, 2009
- In 2006 my novel THE TEXICANS was published. The Texas Monitor judged it one of the two best novels of the year. THE TEXICANS was written in my home office in sunny California, absolutely no threat of death hanging over me while I was writing it. The other novel, SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky, was written in Nazi-occupied France and followed the most tragic trajectory to publication ...
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April 8, 2009
- This Passover, as we celebrate our ancestors’ freedom from slavery, we reconnect through our most important holiday with our centuries-long traditions. It is incumbent upon us to contemplate the broader concept of freedom and what it means to us as individuals, as members of our immediate communities, and as members of the community of Jews across the globe. Throughout history, ...
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January 2, 2009
- Just heard from our temple secretary that the stained glass windows in both Temple Beth El, and in the synagogue, Heska Amuna, have been badly damaged by rocks that were thrown. This is the first time such desecration has occurred in more than 100 years of our existence here in town (50 years in our current building). It's hard not to see this as an effect of the current news reporting on ...
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November 23, 2008
- When I was very young I played checkers with my grandfather, (I called him Papa). As I grew older, I noticed that the other students were playing a different game, Chess on the same checkerboard. This was a much more complicated game filled with many different pieces with unfamiliar shapes. They were in two colors sometimes white and black, with many small pieces (pawns) that looked like ...
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November 8, 2008
- On the eve of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, come revelations that blueprints were found, from 1941, in a Berlin flat that reveal the plan to expand the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and annihilate 11 million European Jews. You'll recall that Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938 was the night when nearly 100 Jews were slaughtered by Nazis, and close to 30,000 ...
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August 30, 2008
- I somehow missed reading James Carroll's book, "Constantine's Sword," but today I saw the film. A friend and I were going to see "Brideshead Revisited." We'd seen the Masterpiece Theatre version but the film was something on our "short list" of movies. Karen was waiting for me at the West Newton Cinema and, since both films were starting at around the same time, ...
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