Habitus

by David Gutherz · 07/27/10

True or false: “there has ever been a source of great tension between Judaism and democracy.” See what Habitus advisor Ian Buruma has to say about it, in this fascinating interview with Farid Boussaid and Jonothan Gharraie. Author of more than a dozen books on  a dizzying array of topics, Buruma’s most recent English-language work is The Taming of the  Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents. In it, Buruma focuses on the complex relations between religion, liberalism, secularism, and democracy in America, Asia, and Europe.

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by David Gutherz · 07/27/10

Chances are if I asked you to give me an example of radical Jewish culture, klezmer  and gefilte fish would not be the first things that comes to mind. For most people, these things are more or less total opposites. Indeed, John Zorn’s project Tzadik: Radical Jewish Culture project, featured in a recent exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Paris, explicitly advertises itself as “Jewish music beyond klezmer.”  Claude Berger, however, begs to differ. When he’s not pulling teeth or writing manifestos calling for an end to salaried labour, Berger runs a small Yiddish cabaret and restaurant called “The Train of Life.” Though not quite as out there as some of the “dub-Gypsy-tango-punk-thrash-neo-clash-post-post-klezmer outfits” we New Yorkers are familiar with, if you’re in Paris in search of some cholent, leftist fury, and mind-expanding jams Berger’s bistro is the place to be.

And if you’re in Brooklyn, well, there’s always another Gogol Bordello show.

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by David Gutherz · 07/21/10

As if it weren’t sweltering enough already, this season of New York summer theater has got a lot of Jews shvitzing under the spotlight. First, there was the Public Theater’s staging of the ever-controversial The Merchant of Venice. Probably the most notorious anti-semitic work of art ever produced, I doubt that there ever was, will, or should be a presentation of Shakespeare’s Shylock that won’t anger and annoy members of his Tribe. Sufferance is our badge, after all.  This time around, the most interesting–and for many most enraging–part is the connection many seem to be drawing between between Shylock and recent financial villains. Consider the following anonymous comment, posted as a response to Time Out New York’s review of the piece.

“Sullivan hands us a sublimely faithful version and is disturbing and thought provoking at the same time. One cannot help be reminded of today’s Madoffs, AIGs, Goldman Sachs et al as well as the global explosion of anti-Semitism caused by Israel’s Likud government committing atrocities all in the name of the Torah’s Judaism, instead of the satanic Talmud (of which Shakespeare may well have been aware).”

As it so happens, this season one need not stretch all the way back to the Bard for such reminders, for Madoff himself is the subject of Obie award winner Deborah Margolin’s new play “Imagining Madoff,” opening tonight at Stageworks/Hudson, in Albany. An imagined dialogue between Madoff and Solomon Galkin–a Holocaust survivor, Poet, and victim of Madoff’s ponzi scheme–Margolin’s piece has already been the subject of a firestorm of controversy because its initial version featured Elie Wiesel (who lost upwards of 15 million dollars because of Madoff) as the crook’s interlocutor. And though that draft was scrapped after Wiesel threatened to sue, judging from its early reviews “Imagining Madoff” remains a whimsical reflection on Wiesel as well.

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by David Gutherz · 07/19/10

Although the mourning does not officially begin for another six hours or so, eastern standard time, the day before Tisha B’av is always a somber time. Even as we prepare to recount the official litany of destruction–destruction of the Temples, fall of Betar, etc.–each year offers new tragedies, new reasons to say aicha. Foremost in many our minds this year, despite the temporary respite from gushing oil, are our friends on the gulf coast–whether feathered, finned,  or human; jewish, goyish or uncommitted–whose lives and livelihoods have been endangered by the BP spill. JTA columnist Edmon Rodman captures the mood precisely when, interweaving excerpts from the book of Lamentations, he writes:

“On this day of national Jewish mourning, when I usually have trouble finding something over which to mourn, to fast and not wear leather, I turn on the news and gone is the joy, my “dancing is turned into mourning” (5:15).“For your ruin is vast as the sea: “Who can heal you?” (2:13)

Then I view with alarm the maps that measure the spread of the slick, or grow confused at the calculations of just how much oil. As the BP spokesmen and politicians try to soothe my pain, I hear:

“The Lord has delivered me into the hands
“Of those I cannot withstand” (1:14).
And what to say of the role of corporate profits and maintenance shortcuts?
“All around me He has built
“Misery and hardship” (3:5).

While eating a fish dinner, I think of the fishermen who now spend their time fishing for oil, and the small businessmen who can no longer make their living from the sea and think:
“The old men are gone from the gate,
“The young men from their music” (5:14).
“All her inhabitants sigh
“As they search for bread” (1:11).

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by David Gutherz · 07/15/10

It has been a roller-coaster week in the cartoon world. First, the anti-Lebron comic-sans catastrophe, then the tragic loss of Harvey Pekar, whose groundbreaking autobiographical series American Splendor and The Quitter beautifully captured the experiences of so many second-generation immigrants and totally redefined the graphic-novel medium. In New York, however, there is a glimmer of hope emanating from the Joyce Theater, which has just unveiled a stunning collaboration between Pilobolus–one of the most innovative, athletic, and divisive contemporary dance troupes–and Art Spiegelman. In this piece, Spiegelman–whose epic Maus obliterated popular conceptions of what cartoonists should or could do–offers a stunning demonstration that  cartooning still has a bright and exciting future as an art form. The piece, entitled Hapless Hooligan in “Still Moving,” will be at the Joyce through August 5.

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by David Gutherz · 07/14/10

Wondering what to do with your Wednesday? Looking for a change of pace? A little intellectual stimulation, for a change? Well, then, you simply should not miss joining Habitus editor Joshua Ellison for a conversation with celebrated author André Aciman tonight–Wednesday, July 14th–at the Museum of Jewish Heritage as they discuss the provocative question: Is New York the Diaspora?

With its enormous Jewish population, its creativity and culture, and its unparalleled array of options for Jewish living, should we really think of New York City as part of the Jewish Diaspora; or is it just another kind of homeland?

André Aciman has chronicled a life’s journey across continents and has also emerged as one of contemporary New York’s most astute literary observers. He writes: “New York is my home precisely because it is a place from which I can begin to be elsewhere…a shadow city.” We will talk to André about being a stranger at home in New York, about the place of the city in his recent work, and what it means to be a Jew here.

Aciman is the author of Out of Egypt and, more recently, Call Me By Your Name and Eight White Nights. He is a Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of New York.

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by David Gutherz · 07/12/10

“Soccer,” our friend Alexander Hemon recently observed, “is like literature. It provides access to a country. No one reads books just from their own country.” Certainly an “un-American” sentiment if I’ve ever heard one, but one that caught our attention. And so we thought: what better way to honor Spain’s long-awaited World Cup victory than with some classic Sephardi poetry, translated by the great Peter Cole?! Moshe Ibn Ezra’s  ”The World” seems particularly apropos:

The World

Men of the world have the world in their heart,
God set it in them when they were born—
it’s a flowing stream that won’t suffice
though the sea becomes its source,

as if its water turned to salt
when a parched heart called out to them—
they pour it from buckets into their mouths
but their thirst is never quenched.

Or, for the morning after, Ezra’s “Weak With Wine.”

Weak with Wine

We woke, weak with wine from the party,
barely able to get up and walk
to the meadow wafting its spices—
the scents of cassia and cloves:

and the sun had embroidered its surface with blossoms
and across it spread a deep blue robe.

And finally, in the spirit of good sportsmanship, here is contemporary Dutch poetess Judith Herzberg (translated by Shirley Kaufman in conjunction with the author) reflecting on a sound that was repeated (no doubt too many times) throughout the yellow-card flooded game.

OW!

Could there be such a thing, a law
for the conservation of pain,
so that if we fight it here,
someone somewhere will be hurt
worse than the sound of ow?

Or does pain, like energy
(sorry, analogy), transform itself
not into heat, but somehow
into a kind of freeze
worse than the sound of ow?

Or could it be the pain we drive out
takes on a different form,
unlaughed, unsung, disavowed,
stiffens our pain-thirsty bodies
aching for the sound of ow?

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by David Gutherz · 07/09/10

For those of you who are (or may soon be) joining us from Moscow, be sure not to miss the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War’s newest exhibit: “Writings and Reflections of Jewish Soldiers in the Red Army.” Part of a larger documentary project that has already collected records from approximately 900 veterans, the project seeks to combat stereotypical visions of Jews as perpetual victims. “I wanted to somehow document the role of Jews in the history of war,” said project director Leonard Blavatnik, ”not only as victims, but also as heroes.”

Read more: The Jewish Chronicle – Moscow exhibit gives a voice to Jewish Red Army soldiers

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by David Gutherz · 07/09/10

It has been more than half a century now since the death of Josef Stalin, but Vasily Grossman–the great Russian-Jewish novelist whose work we published in issue five–is still suffering on his account. As The Guardian‘s Moscow correspondent Luke Harding details, Grossman’s work–although increasingly popular in the West–still rubs many Muscovites the wrong way. In the midst of the Kremlin’s quiet but persistent campaign to rehabilitate Stalin, Grossman’s work is seen by many as a pesky reminder of just how bleak, savage, and sad life could be under his Iron Fist. And no doubt Grossman would never want us to forget it. But, then again, to judge his novels as bits of war journalism is like reducing Anna Kareninina to a piece of anarchist pamphleteering. For, as his daughter Ekaterina points out, although never one to blunt the reality of suffering, Grossman also had an uncanny skill for finding warmth amidst the agony and goodness in even the darkest of men. His is a message that deserves to be heard, and one can only hope that in the coming years more readers in his home country learn to unplug their ears.

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by David Gutherz · 07/08/10

Are you suffering from imminent World Cup withdrawal? Wishing you could keep South Africa in your thoughts for just a little bit longer? Well, then, just head on over to the Jewish Museum of New York City, where you’ll find a pair of splendid exhibitions devoted to William Kentridge and David Goldblatt, two of the Rainbow Nation’s finest contemporary artists. As Josef Lelyved’s review of Goldblatt’s work emphasizes, both artists present a potent mix of art and politics that plays off our pre-conceptions and aims to shatter stereotypes. It may not be as fun as watching this Sunday’s final, but these images will stay with you long after the last highlight re-runs have stopped.

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