joselit – Page 22 – From Under the Fig Tree

Chosen-ness

joselitMarch 21, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

There aren’t too many novels that can lay claim to a second, much less a third, lease on life as both a film and a play, especially when the subject at hand has to do with religion and faith. But The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s novel of Orthodox Jewish life in Brooklyn during the waning years of the 1940s, has, of late, scored a home run.

These days, it takes the form of a critically acclaimed play which, thanks to a creative partnership between Theater J and Arena Stage, can be seen at the latter’s 800-seat Fichandler Theatre downtown.

Nearly 30 years earlier, The Chosen, its palette awash in brown and ochre, was brought to the silver screen, where the likes of Maximillian Schell and Rod Steiger inhabited the roles of a modern Orthodox Jew and a Hasidic rebbe, respectively. The film’s opening scene -- a baseball game between yeshiva boys and their Hasidic counterparts -- remains as powerful today as it first did a generation ago.

And before that, the novel made its debut in 1967. Initial reviews were lukewarm and tepid.

Eliot Fremont-Smith, writing in The New York Times, called the book “thematically overstuffed and dramatically undernourished,” adding, snippily, that its dramatic arc had been reached by page 37. (He subsequently changed his mind about the book, admitting that his initial judgment had been too hasty.)

But the reading public took to The Chosen with great and immediate relish and within a few months’ time, this revelatory coming of age story had become a runaway best-seller, first in cloth and then in paperback. The novel, related its publisher with unbridled glee, “is one of the happiest phenomena in recent publishing history,” noting that it “rings just as true in Iowa as in Brooklyn.”

An exercise in de-mystification, a study in friendship, a tale of fathers and sons – all these are possible explanations for the book’s hold on the American imagination. Whatever the reason, The Chosen is well worth another look.

But hurry: the play, followed by a talk-back between yours truly and Ari Roth, the artistic director of Theater J, is scheduled to close next Sunday.

Music men

joselitMarch 10, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Just the other night, amidst the glorious surroundings of the Music Room of The Phillips Collection, whose walls are bedecked with one masterpiece after another, over 100 people gathered together under the aegis of GW’s Program in Judaic Studies to hear Professor James Loeffler of the University of Virginia incisively discuss how it came to pass that the violin became known as the “Jewish national instrument.”

I suspect this was the very first time that the Music Room rang with explicit talk of the storied relationship between the Jews and classical music. But it’s hardly the first time that the nation’s capitol engaged in such a discussion.

Many years before, Israel Zangwill’s potboiler of a play, “The Melting Pot,” debuted in D.C. Applauded enthusiastically by Teddy Roosevelt, the country’s president at the time, the four-act drama centered on music.

In Zangwill’s imagined universe, settlement houses in the heart of the ghetto pulsed with music, immigrant Jews named Mendel gave piano lessons to American boys named Johnny, while a Russian Jewish violinist composed a symphonic salute to the United States, which he fulsomely called “Sinfonia Americana.”

Here, and elsewhere throughout the play, Zangwill gave voice to the belief that listening to a concerto or a symphony or a march was not just an aesthetic experience but a civic and communal one with the capacity to weld together America’s oldest and newest citizens. From where he sat, music was key to an expansive and inclusive sense of the world.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many Jews took up the violin, that instrument of longing and possibility?

Object lesson

joselitMarch 7, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In my household, Sundays are usually given over to two rituals: reading The New York Times and taking in a museum exhibition. I suspect your household is no different.

But, as I explained recently to a group of GW alumni who had come together on a rainy Sunday morning to visit the brand new National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia as part of an alumni series called “GW Culture Buffs,” the mere thought of doing exactly what we were doing had once generated more than its fair share of controversy.

We take our Sundays-at-the-museum for granted; earlier generations of culture buffs did not. Many museum officials and their elite patrons were initially rather resistant to the idea of opening the doors of, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on a Sunday, fearful lest it attract the wrong kind of people—those with “vandal hands” or broken English. A Sunday at the Met, they warned, was a “perilous experiment.”

Metropolitan Museum button — Once upon a time, Met entry buttons were useless on a Sunday. Credit: Charley Lhasa/Flickr

Americans, especially Jewish immigrants from the Lower East Side, didn’t see things quite that way and joined hands with socially conscious civic reformers to expand the franchise of museum-going by writing editorials in the Yiddish press and circulating petitions on the Jewish street.

Where America’s elite believed that visiting a museum was a privilege, Americans at the grass roots believed that it was a right, a perquisite of urban citizenship.

Were it not for the zealousness and passion with which they defended that belief, the nation’s museums would be grand, if empty, spaces.

Here, there and everywhere

joselitFebruary 21, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Princeton’s Cotsen Children’s Library is justly celebrated for the range of its holdings, the imaginative reach of its curators and its stimulating conferences, like the one I had the good fortune to attend just the other day, which explored the ephemera -- the stuff -- of childhood.

Alice in Wonderland — Credit: Wikipedia.

From its title, “Enduring Trifles,” to the fascinating constellation of its presentations, which encompassed such “trifles” as toy theater, writing sheets, paper and rag dolls, grammar books, Girl Guide badges and Moses action figures (my contribution to the proceedings), I knew I was in for a treat.

What I didn’t anticipate was the degree to which references to the Jews would surface time and again -- and in the most curious ways, leaving me feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland.

For starters, our packet of informational materials included a brochure, playfully titled “More Tigers Spotted in the Cotsen Children’s Library,” -- an allusion to Princeton’s mascot -- which featured an illustration of a fierce, red-eyed tiger by El Lissitsky. The illustration accompanied Bentsiyon Raskin’s 1919 Yiddish children’s book, Di hun vas gevolt hobn a kam (The Hen Who Wanted a Comb).

Another Cotsen find was Aunt Fanny’s Junior Jewish Cookbook. This 1950s childrens’ cookbook was the subject of an insightful paper by my student Rachel Gross, who looked at the ways in which draydel salad and other fanciful postwar delights of the table placed culinary fun rather than filial responsibility at the center of young Jewish lives.

By far the biggest, and most eye-opening, revelation came from Matthew Grenby of Newcastle University. His inquiry into the ways in which politics informed 18th century children’s literature drew on an adventure story published in the Lilliputian Magazine, a periodical intended for young readers. In this yarn, citizens of the 18th century escape the ills of modern-day Britain by establishing a utopian society in faraway Madascagar.

In many respects, this tale resembled any number of island stories then popular with the reading public. (Think Robinson Crusoe.) Yet, as Prof. Grenby astutely pointed out, all sorts of coded and not-so-coded references to the controversial ‘Jew Bill’ of 1752, which dangled the possibility of granting the Jews civil rights, were embedded in this seemingly lighthearted narrative.

We tend to look for observations about the Jewish historical experience in the usual places. What I took away from the Cotsen conference was that they are just as likely to pop up where we least expect them.

Being there

joselitFebruary 14, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

The recent revelation that iTunes has created an “app” that seems to substitute for confession underscores the power of technology to redefine the very notion of ritual practice.

So, too, has “Tweet Your Prayers,” in which electronic kvitlakh, or personal petitions, can be sent to the kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, via twitter, or www.e-daf.com, in which the age-old custom of studying a page of Talmud a day can now be handily accomplished online.

Whatever will they think up next?!

More to the point, perhaps, what are we to make of these newfangled phenomena? Should we embrace them? Hold them at arm’s length? Or simply shrug our shoulders and give them a pass?

I, for one, would have wanted to know what Charles Silberman would have made of it all. The author, among other things, of A Certain People: American Jews and their Lives Today (1985), Mr. Silberman, a longtime Upper West Sider with a keen and discerning eye, died recently in Florida at the age of 86.

I had the pleasure and privilege of spending time in his company at a secular humanist conference in Detroit several years ago where the two of us -- for different reasons -- felt like fish out of water. Our mutual sense of perplexity brought us together and for a while, in the wake of the conference, we kept in touch.

But then one thing or another got in the way -- his relocation to Florida, my comings and goings between New York and Princeton and D.C. -- and that was that.

I never did get around to asking Mr. Silberman where he stood on the digitization of Jewish life, but I suspect that, in his gentle but firm manner, he would have aptly taken its measure, totted up its strengths and limitations and then made a case for the importance of actually being there -- in the belly of community.

Unscripted

joselitFebruary 6, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

We spend a lot of time thinking up ways to engage our students: tinkering with the text of our remarks, searching for le mot juste, much less the perfect illustration, devising imaginative exercises. The better the prep, we tell ourselves, the better the class.

But now and then, something happens in the classroom -- something entirely unanticipated -- and we're off and running. The most magical moments in the classroom, it turns out, are spontaneous rather than planned.

This week, the subject of my "Jewish Lives" class was Mary Antin and her 1912 autobiography, The Promised Land, a celebration-cum-manifesto of the processes by which immigrants became Americans. We discussed why the book was so widely reviewed and saluted in the years prior to World War I, why it has remained in print for nearly 100 years and what it might possibly offer those of us who've come of age in the 21st century.

Our exchanges, though lively, were couched largely in intellectual terms. The students tended to view the challenges that Antin faced through the prism of history, distantly. Finding one's voice and footing; figuring out which rituals and traditions to retain and which to jettison; how best, as Antin put it, "to take possession of America" -- all this seemed, well, academic.

And then, up in the front of the room, a first-year student who is usually quiet and contained began to speak in an accented English and with mounting excitement about the copy of The Promised Land which she had obtained via interlibrary loan: a first edition. More tellingly still, she told us how its tattered condition as well as its long, long list of stamped due dates bore witness to the book having been read and re-read -- and now, read again.

All of a sudden, it dawned on everyone in the room that Mary Antin’s words were not just glimpses into a world gone by or, for that matter, pretty turns of phrase. In one powerful moment, we came to understand that for some of us at GW in 2011, Mary Antin's words were as evergreen and fresh and vital as they had been way back when in 1912.

Promised lands 1

joselitJanuary 26, 2011November 16, 20171 Comment

Word from on high is that the Walt Disney Company is planning to open a theme park in Israel. Talk about bringing coals to Newcastle!

For years, religiously-minded Americans had created facsimiles of the Holy Land on American soil. As early as 1881, a "miniature representation in relief and color" of Jerusalem graced Ocean Grove, N.J., a Methodist summer colony.

The organizers of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis did the residents of Ocean Grove one better. "Jerusalem comes to you," they proclaimed, replicating the Jaffa Gate, the Dome of the Rock, the Tower of David and the so-called Wailing Wall on the grounds of the fair and importing 1,000 honest-to-goodness inhabitants of Palestine to populate the site.

Meanwhile, in Orlando, Fla., just a few miles away from Sea World and Walt Disney World, contemporary evangelical Protestants throng the Holy Land Experience, which boasts of transporting visitors "2,000 years back in time to the land of the Bible."

Much like an old-fashioned amusement park but better, the Holy Land Experience contains the "Temple Plaza," the Shofar Auditorium, a Scriptorium, the "world's largest indoor model of Jerusalem," and a laser show in which the Ten Commandments are etched in fire atop Mount Sinai.

The idea behind the Holy Land Experience, explains Joan R. Branham (PDF), is to create a "complex theological landscape" that blends Judaism with Christianity.

...continue reading "Promised lands"

True grit

joselitJanuary 19, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

The Coen Brothers' recently released cinematic homage to the cowboys and gunslingers of the Old West places squarely within our sights the centrality of masculinity to the making of modern America.

Boxing gloves — Flickr: Kristin Wall/ KWDesigns.

The pursuit of masculinity also loomed large within the precincts of the modern Jewish experience. Eager to supplant their traditional braininess with brawn, growing numbers of Jewish men in both the Old World and the New of the late 19th and 20th centuries forsook the yeshiva for the boxing ring and the baseball diamond.

Occasioning lots of commentary over the years, the transformation of the Jewish male has also been the subject of several hard-hitting contemporary documentaries. Over the course of the next few months GW's Program in Judaic Studies will partner with American University's Program in Jewish Studies to showcase three films that explore the relationship among brain, brawn and the Jewish male.

"Tough Guys," as we're calling the series, commences on Jan. 25 at 7 p.m., with a screening at American University of The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (event details here). This profile of the legendary baseball player will be followed a few weeks later on Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. at American Unversity by a salute to prize-fighter Dmitriy Salita, whose boxing prowess along with his religiosity is explored in Orthodox Stance.

The series culminates on April 4 at 7 p.m. on GW's campus (Room 310, School of Media and Public Affairs) with a screening of Disturbing the Universe, an in-depth look at the career of legal tiger and brawler, William Kunstler, who had a fierce and fighting way with words.

Baseball, boxing, the law and Jewish men: Who can resist?

Writing on faith

joselitJanuary 13, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Guest post by Menachem Wecker

During the Q&A period of a Dec. 1 event at the National Press Club titled "Why journalists must understand religion," I asked Sally Quinn, founder and moderator of the Washington Post's On Faith, if it was an advantage for reporters to approach the religion beat with insider knowledge of the faiths they are covering.

typewriter — Credit: Flickr user Helen Black.

After all, I've found that some of my most creative stories have stemmed from a nuanced understanding of rabbinic and biblical Judaism, whether it was noticing Hebrew typos in William Blake's paintings, mistranslations in the promotional materials of Hebrew inscriptions on rings in a gift shop at a mega-church or examining seemingly incongruous visual elements (like rabbit hunts or twisted pillars) in Jewish illuminated manuscripts and synagogues.

On the other hand, I've written for Catholic, Arab American and Mormon publications, and invariably, I learn the most from writing for those audiences, because I'm forced to do more research and to double- and triple-check my work.

Ms. Quinn responded that experience clearly helps a reporter understand the story, but it is not a prerequisite to good reporting.

I was replaying the Press Club event in my head when my editor at the Houston Chronicle asked me to write a news story for the paper on Christmas. It sounds like the beginning of an off-color joke: a kid named Menachem starts writing a story on Christmas art...

I have to say, though, that in the process of researching the story -- which ran Dec. 23 as "Fine Art displays haven't forsaken the Nativity" -- I definitely found myself enjoying the process all the more so because I knew I was treading holy water.

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, an adjunct professor of religious art and cultural history at Georgetown University, sent me a handful of articles and chapters she’d written on the subject, and I happily and hungrily devoured them word for word -- several times each.

I also got a kick out of emailing back and forth with art blogger Tyler Green, who had created an online Adventist and Chanukah calendar on the micro-blogging platform Tumblr.

Some might say that chutzpah draws me to non-Jewish stories, but I prefer to see it as an expression of a different Jewish value: sakranut, or curiosity -- the same sentiment that motivated the famous monkey Curious George, who according to the latest wisdom, might even have been Jewish himself.

What would Curious George have had to say about Christmas art? Probably not a whole lot, but I can just see him getting caught up in some mischief as he tried to track Santa (b. 1881) down to personally deliver his wish list -- sure to be a whole lot of bananas.

Taking note

joselitJanuary 11, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

I've been meaning for quite some time now to write about the Judaica Sound Archives, an online treasure trove of American Jewry's musicological patrimony, but I couldn't quite find the right note to strike. In the wake of the sudden and untimely passing of Debbie Friedman, whose musical contributions to the shaping of contemporary Jewish life are virtually without parallel, the appropriate occasion presents itself.

sheet music — Flickr user: Stellae et Luna. Creative commons licensed.

I don't know whether the Judaica Sound Archives, which is maintained by the Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, actually contains any of Debbie Friedman's songs -- I'm sure it will in due course -- but the collection houses just about everything else that once made for American Jewry's varied and lively acoustic culture.

Heart-throbbing cantorial recordings, perky children's songs such as Alef Bet in Song and Story, which taught the age-old Hebrew alphabet in "jingle form," reedy Yiddish folk music and shirei Eretz Yisrael, among them the popular Hebrew song, Tzena Tzena, whose relentlessly upbeat tempo took America -- and Jewish summer camps-- by storm in the early 1950s abound. So, too, do highly stylized album covers.

Though much of this material may seem hokey and hopelessly outdated, especially to those of us more accustomed to hip hop than chazanus (cantorializing), it underscores just how much we measure our lives by the songs we sing on the street, in shul, at the table and around the campfire.