by Habitus · 01/27/12
We are thrilled to share our latest issue, New York, in which we turn our attention homeward. Get yours today.
Click here to see the full Table of Contents.
Read our interviews with Michael Arad and André Aciman, and read a timeless essay from Konrad Bercovici—penned in 1923—about “The Greatest Jewish City in the World.”
More previews and additional New York material will be posted soon, so keep visiting our site.
Leave a Comment by Daniel Bloch · 01/27/12
Courtesy of fotosencontradas.com.ar
Here’s what’s on our mind this week:
Reclaiming home, warts and all
“Pinch your nose and off we go,” advises novelist and Habitus contributor Aleksandar Hemon in this month’s issue of Guernica Magazine, as he leads us through the “deep shit pit of war, peace and politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Hemon unflinchingly examines the foreboding trend of ethnicity-based education in the former Yugoslavia. (See our Sarajevo issue for more from the region.) “Do three or more passports make you alive several times over?” wonders Irin Carmon in a fascinating meditation on citizenship and family, as she explores her acquisition–and potential loss–of a German passport. “Where they fled, we globetrot, a historical asymmetry that parallels the other privileges earlier generations earned for us.” (See our Berlin issue for more on contemporary German Jewish identity.)
Life in pictures, lost and found
Be sure to check out three captivating photo essays: Jessica Ingram’s “A Civil Rights Memorial” captures the often un-memorialized sites of hope, resistance and violence scattered throughout the South that, once re-discovered, provide vivid insight into the struggle to end segregation. Polish photographer Rafal Milach has followed the lives of seven young Russians as they find their way amidst ever-shifting landscapes. And Hiroyuki Ito, whose work has largely focused on New York, his home for the past 20 years, documents his return to Japan following the death of his father.
And don’t miss out on browsing through the hundreds of random photographs found on the streets of Buenos Aires–namely the Once neighborhood, the one-time center of Jewish life in the city–collected and loosely curated here. It’s at once an entertaining and unsettling experience.
From Yiddishkeit
Sketches of Idisshu
Now that our New York issue is about to come out, we have time to catch up on some recent books we missed. One of our favorites is Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, co-edited by the late, great Harvey Pekar. The book is a colorful consideration–through comics and essays–of secular Yiddish culture through the ages, focusing on the artists and writers who helped revive the language in the diaspora, especially in New York. And another new book that we just might actually get a hold of someday is the Yiddish-Japanese Dictionary/Yidish-Yapanish Verterbukh/Idisshu-go jiten, which runs over 1,300 pages and was compiled by one of Japan’s foremost Yiddishists. Who knew?!
by Daniel Bloch · 01/10/12
Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn / William Gedney
Here’s what on our mind this week:
From the scribes
Poet, translator and Habitus contributor Lisa Katz offers an intriguing who’s who of contemporary Israeli poetry, from more well-known writers like Agi Mishol (featured in our Budapest issue), Dan Pagis, Yitzhak Laor and Taha Muhammad Ali to relative newcomers (at least for those of us who are stateside) like Anat Zecharya, Almog Behar and Admiel Kosman.
In Shalom Auslander’s new novel, Hope: A Tragedy, the main character, already besieged by a slew of problems in his daily upstate-New York existence, discovers Anne Frank herself living in his attic. Auslander discusses the connotations of this here.
And Etgar Keret’s story, “Creative Writing,” finds a husband and wife spinning fantastical tales.
Through the viewfinder
We said goodbye this week to Eve Arnold, who passed away at 99. The daughter of a rabbi, Arnold was the creator of iconic images of celebrities (perhaps most famously, Marilyn Monroe) and ordinary folk alike, and one of the first female photographers to be hired by Magnum.
In another, more gradual goodbye, the photographer William Gedney documented the demolition of the Myrtle Avenue elevated subway in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and the reshaping of the landscape beneath it, all from his apartment window.
by Daniel Bloch · 01/04/12
Courtesy of Project Neon
Happy new year! Here’s what’s on our mind this week:
Start 2012 off with a few fascinating reads: The Shifting Boundaries of Jewish Identity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Multiple Identity Narratives and Histories explores both new and familiar nuances of what it means to be Jewish. BOMBlog considers the rollicking and largely fabricated legacy of Octobriana, a Soviet-era cartoon bombshell. And philosopher John Gray offers a thoughtful antidote to doom-and-gloom scenarios created by recent socio-political change.
And the latest in city-speak: Economist Edward Glaeser celebrates cities as catalysts for “collaborative brilliance.” SoBro vs. ProCro? The Atlantic Cities finds out what’s behind the art (or lack thereof) of (re)naming a neighborhood. The Manhattan grid system design just turned 200, and the Museum of the City of New York is honoring it through April. And finally, what’s lovelier than a frigid New York night lit up by neon?
by Daniel Bloch · 12/28/11
From "The Block," by Romare Bearden
Here’s what’s on our mind this week:
Urban renewals
If you haven’t guessed by now, we love a good city story, and here are a few: Read Shelley Salamensky’s insightful look at “Diaspora Disneys,” re-creations–and, in some cases, renewals–of urban Jewish life and culture in Krakow, Birobidzhan and a town in western Spain. Follow cookbook author and food blogger Alex Schmidt as she enlists her bobe Dora on a hunt for Jewish soul food in Mexico City. Check out Madrid’s version of the High Line, part of an enormous project that includes new parks, plazas, transit options and a rebirth of the Manzanares river. Finally, be sure to take a look at the Best CityReads of 2011, courtesy of The Atlantic Cities.
Literary musings
Habitus contributor and friend Susan Bernofsky remembers Robert Walser, who died on Christmas Day, 1956. The New York Times considers the Bible’s overwhelming literary legacy through the ages. And the daughter of Ezra Pound fights to have her father’s name disassociated from an Italian right-wing group connected to the recent shooting deaths of Senegalese immigrants in Florence.
Cinematic intimacy
Tintin and Margaret Thatcher biopics not your thing? Have no fear: Dau, a grandiose doozy of a film about the life of physicist Lev Landau is already five years in the making; here is a preview/exposé from GQ. (Warning: lie down before you read this because you will need to afterward.) On a smaller scale, Papirosen, the latest film from Argentine director Gastón Solnicki will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image next month. For the film, Solnicki–who will appear in person at the screening–distilled hundreds of hours of footage of his extended family to a brief 74 minutes, charting their lives in Buenos Aires and beyond.
Portraits
Photographer Gisèle Freund captured Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in eerily timeless color images, but photographing the star writers of her day was only part of her fascinating journey. We salute abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler, who passed away this week at the age of 83. And a special cosmic shout out to Romare Bearden, whose centennial is currently being honored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
by Daniel Bloch · 12/15/11
Here’s what’s on our mind this week:
Inherited borders / Paper cities / The everywhere-ness of a song
"Jerusalem," Matthew Picton
The Borderlines column of the New York Times ran a fascinating piece on the shape of East and West Germany and how the roots of their formerly notorious border might go back all the way to 900 A.D. The artist Matthew Picton creates cityscapes out of paper, but not just any paper. His model of Jerusalem (see detail), for example, is crafted from slips of paper quoting The New Testament, The Torah, the Koran and the Armenian Bible. Check out his other visions (including Lower Manhattan) in person. Meanwhile, André Aciman guides us through the cross-border, multilingual history of a single evocative song.
A Tunisian return / A Bolaño motif / A critic’s legacy
The writer Colette Fellous admits to a “permanent feeling of at the same time being present wherever [I] live but also slightly out of context,” and her novels have explored this condition, largely through her own migrations–both literal and literary–between Tunisia and France. If you’re a fan of Roberto Bolaño’s work, maybe at some point you’ve wondered, “What’s with all the Nazis?” Well, here’s a thoughtful consideration of that question. And speaking of thoughtful considerations, the Daily Beast examines Why Trilling Matters, Adam Kirsch’s appreciation of literary critic Lionel Trilling.
A glimpse of an artists’ den / World poetry in motion
Little Star features an intriguing piece by Rosanna Warren that vividly imagines Le Bateau Lavoir, the Montmartre building that served as a haven and inspiration for Picasso and Max Jacob, among many others, for much of the first half of the twentieth century. And, finally, don’t miss out on the World’s 10 Best Transit Poems! (Note: the feature neglects to include the poem featured in the lead photo. It’s “Tango de Montréal,” by Québécois poet Gérald Godin.)
by Daniel Bloch · 12/05/11
Boris Kossoy, "Protest against the Vietnam War, New York, 1971"
As we begin December, here’s what’s crisp and new this week:
Back in the USSR (and out of it)
One of the more interesting obituaries in recent memory noted the the death of Lana Peters, AKA Svetlana Alliluyeva, AKA Svetlana Stalina, the daughter of Joseph Stalin. The Guardian examines her legacy as a “cold war plaything.” Meanwhile, Tablet Magazine reconsiders Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman‘s magnum opus about Jews who survived the Holocaust only to find themselves under Stalin’s rule. Tonia Ben-Barak, grandmother of acclaimed Israeli novelist Meir Shalev, lived through both tragedies.She is the subject of Shalev’s recently-translated memoir, My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner. Take a look at a review and an excerpt.
Contributors’ Corner
The latest New Yorker features an essay by Aleksandar Hemon, whose work graces our Sarajevo issue. In other news, Ana María Shua‘s Death as a Side Effect was published in her native Argentina nearly twenty years ago, and has finally appeared in English. Read a recent review featured on Three Percent, the blog wing of Open Letter Books. For more of Shua’s work in English, check out our Buenos Aires issue.
Through the Lens
The Aperture Foundation has released a volume on contemporary Latin American photography aptly titled, The Latin American Photo Book. Our friend Marcelo Brodsky is one of many contributors to this fascinating anthology, which includes Boris Kossoy, the Brazilian photographer who has taken evocative pictures of New York (see example above). And speaking of evocative pictures of New York, be sure to look “Out Harvey Wang’s Window,” now on view at the Tenement Museum‘s new exhibition space at 103 Orchard Street. Click here for a preview of Wang‘s striking portraits of the Lower East Side in flux.
by Habitus · 11/27/11
Arthur Leipzig, Chalk Games, Prospect Place, Brooklyn
Here is a round-up of what we’re excited about this week and think you will be, too:
On Our Shelf
Read an excerpt from Umberto Eco‘s latest novel, The Prague Cemetery, which deals with the legendary anti-Semitic tract, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Take a look at what the New York Times and the Washington Post think about it. And make sure to read (and watch) what Eco himself has to say.
Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative is a collection of essays–on everything from digital animation to writer’s block–by Lawrence Weschler, director of NYU’s Institute for the Humanities and Habitus board member. Check out an interview with Weschler, read a review of the book and tune into a talk he gave at the Open Society Institute.
André Aciman, a fellow Habitus board member, contributor, and friend, has written a new memoir, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere. Read the New York Times review, as well as the feature on Tablet Magazine, which includes an excerpt.
The work of Argentine writer Sergio Chejfec has finally appeared in English, thanks to Open Letter Books, which published his My Two Worlds this summer and plans to release his The Planets next year. Take a look at the Words without Borders review of My Two Worlds and the recent interview with Chejfec in Guernica Magazine. Look for more from Chejfec in our upcoming New York issue.
Jews with Cameras
Photographer Joshua Cogan has traveled the world in search of far-flung Jewish communities, from Gondar in Ethiopia to Kochi in southern India. Check out his evocative photos as featured in the Forward.
The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 is now on view through March at the Jewish Museum and profiles the dynamic Jewish photographers who combined their art with social commentary and found a new way of looking at New York. For more, take a look at our recent conversation with Daniel Morris, author of After Weegee: Essays on Contemporary Jewish American Photographers.
From Nowy Targ to Zuccotti Park
Translationista, the blog of author and translator Susan Bernofsky, features a fascinating personal essay linking a visit to her grandmother’s hometown in Poland to Bernofsky’s experiences in Zuccotti Park with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Be sure to check out the recent interview with Bernofsky in Book Forum, and our Berlin issue, which features her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck.
-Compiled by Daniel Bloch and Michael Sterling
by Daniel Bloch · 11/21/11
Maghen Abraham synagogue before renovations (courtesy Wikipedia)
To speak of synagogues in Lebanon sounds obscure today, given the country’s history of conflict with Israel, but at one time over 20,000 Jews worshipped in dozens of synagogues throughout the country. The community’s core has always been Beirut, which is fitting given the city’s legacy of religious diversity, but the sectarian bloodshed of the ’70s and ’80s drove the majority of Lebanon’s Jews overseas, mainly to Europe and the United States. (Ironically, the deadly Green Line dividing Beirut’s Christian and Muslim neighborhoods during the civil war ran through the Jewish quarter, Wadi Abu Jamil.) The community now hovers around 200, but a comprehensive plan to rebuild the Maghen Abraham synagogue in Beirut is nearing completion.
The project, as covered recently by Deutsche Welle Online, began in 2009 and has progressed under tight security and with financial support from both the Lebanese Jewish diaspora and local construction companies involved in urban renewal projects in downtown Beirut. One of the companies, Solidere, was founded by Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister whose assassination in 2005 touched off massive socio-political change in Lebanon. For an in-depth look at the rebuilding of Maghen Abraham, check out the website of the Lebanese Jewish Community Council, which includes extensive photo coverage of the reconstruction, as well as notes on the community’s history.
by Daniel Bloch · 11/09/11
Photo by Marcelo Brodsky
The work of Marcelo Brodsky merges the historical with the personal. In his career as a photographer, Brodsky has created an enormous archive of powerful images engaging with the nuances of his identity as an artist, a Jew, an Argentine and the brother of a desaparecido–a disappeared. Marcelo’s brother Fernando is one of an estimated 30,000 Argentines who were kidnapped, tortured and killed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 Dirty War, victims of an exceptionally cruel apparatus of state-sponsored terrorism which targeted suspected “subversives.” Many, like Fernando, were barely out of their teens and allegedly linked, however tenuously, to anti-dictatorship political and social movements. Once detained, the majority were never heard from again, their bodies never recovered, thus literally disappearing by the thousands from their families–a horrific technique replicated during the same era by dictatorships across Latin America, especially in Chile and Uruguay.
In a conversation that appeared in the Buenos Aires issue of Habitus, Marcelo Brodsky recognized the importance of his family’s experience not only to his art but to a larger conversation about collective healing and memory in Argentina. Brodsky said:
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