Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture
Archive
Welcome to the Zeek archive. New Zeek content is published every week at zeek.forward.com. This archive contains over 800 pages of free content published from 2003-2007. Enjoy!
2006-2007
Art & Culture Books Essay Fiction Jay Music Poetry Politics Spirit Translation VideoArt & Culture
(De)Programming the Middle East: A Conversation with Jamal Dajani Joel Schalit
If you haven’t seen it before, Mosaic will change the way you think about the Middle East. A thirty-minute daily news report aggregating content from...
March, 2008
ARTSESSION 2007: Contemporary Israeli Artists from Russia Marina Genkina
This essay by Marina Genkina is excerpted from the introduction to a new catalog of Israeli-Russian artists titled ARTSESSION 2007: Contemporary Israeli Artists from...
March, 2008
Hey Judes: Dylan and the Beatles Transformed Stephen Hazan Arnoff
When poet-provocateur Allen Ginsburg pulls up in a golf cart on the side of the highway and asks, “What now?,” Jude – one of six...
January, 2008
This American Life and the Illusion of No Illusion Mark Oppenheimer
One winter a few years back, my wife and I went to see Ira Glass, the host of the radio show This American Life, perform...
November, 2007
Couples Sculpture by Jonathan Ofek - Text by Amitai Mendelsohn
Jonathan Ofek’s work derives its inspiration from various sources, including Mesopotamian, pre-Colombian, and early Christian art. Ofek’s "Couples" series revolves around the duality of the...
September, 2007
Missing A Beat Mark Cohen
The marketers of Beat sure have learned the lessons of standardization. The year started off with New York’s 92nd Street Y taking a look at...
September, 2007
Jews and Pop Culture: If Not Now, When? And if Now, Why? Dan Friedman
Reviewed: Paul Buhle Jews and American Popular Culture Praeger Publishers 2007 Growing up in England, where the “popular” of “popular culture” precluded anything but a...
August, 2007
Enemies Out of the Frame: Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort Shai Ginsburg
Ostensibly, Joseph Cedar’s film Beaufort (Israel, 2007) portrays the denouement of the first Lebanon war, which came to an end with Israel’s withdrawal from southern...
July, 2007
A Living Lens David Stromberg
For more than a century the lens of the Forward – originally known as the Yiddish-language daily newspaper Forvarts – has followed the journey of...
May, 2007
Shoot Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses: The Biblical Stories of Adi Nes Susan Chevlowe
In the 21st century when an artist, particularly one who is Jewish, chooses to engage the Bible through his art, it is natural to see...
April, 2007
Kishke, Culture, and Celebrity Chefs: A Conversation with the Food Maven Leah Koenig
Five minutes into our meeting in the kitchen of his Park Slope, Brooklyn home, food writer Arthur Schwartz offered me a bowl of still warm,...
February, 2007
Cooking up Community with the Jews of Turkmenistan Darra Goldstein
There I was at the bookstore, furtively eyeing lush chicken legs, decadent almond tortes, glistening honey cakes, and sensuous strands of challah. My senses...
December, 2006
Tsfat: Images of the Aftermath Eliyahu Alpern
The guns, for now, are silent. Whether the cease fire currently in place in South Lebanon will hold -- the only sure prediction is that...
September, 2006
Candles of 9/11 Elana Dweck
There was a short time, five years ago, when we all flew the flag. This was before the "War on Terror" became a pretext, and...
September, 2006
Portfolio: Nava Lubelski Nava Lubelski
I met Nava Lubelski on an artist’s retreat in Johnson, Vermont, at the first supper of the retreat. Over fresh baked bread, we talked...
August, 2006
Biography as Destiny: Eva Hesse at the Jewish Museum Esther Nussbaum
Around and around: the ongoing debates over Eva Hesse Regularly exhibited during her lifetime in the museums and galleries of New York and abroad,...
August, 2006
Artneuland: Israeli Art without Borders Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Yael Katz Ben Shalom and Eyal Ben-Dov are members of Artneuland, an Israeli collective of leading artists, curators, theoreticians, and intellectuals. Primarily focused on photography...
July, 2006
Goldbergers and Cheeseburgers: Food and Particularism among American Jews Leah Koenig
1. Bacon and Manischewitz My brother, both a carnivore and contrarian from day one, adored the crispy, fat-streaked bacon he sampled surreptitiously in friends’ kitchens....
June, 2006
Day and Night Dreams Meghan Adler
The following are excerpts from Meghan Adler's book, I Will Tell You How It Was In My Country, which contains visual art, poetry, and passages...
May, 2006
Remembering Miriam: Beth Grossman's "Our Mother Mary Found" Sarah Glover
"It's beautiful. It's brilliant. We'll never show it." Such was the response California artist Beth Grossman received when presenting her latest body of work to...
April, 2006
Tribal-Princess Barbie Leah Koenig
Barbie: model, ballerina, doctor, fashionista, icon, astronaut, rockstar…Jew? America’s favorite plastic shiksa might be able to explain how today’s generation of Jews feels about...
April, 2006
Books
Epicure on Rye - A Profile of Gary Shteyngart Dan Friedman
A compatriot of mine once said of Russian foreign policy that it was a riddle wrapped in an enigma cloaked in a mystery. Gary Shteyngart...
April, 2008
Ruth Wisse’s Sermon Jerome Copulsky
Reviewed: Ruth R. Wisse, Jews and PowerSchocken, 2007. Jews have a long and intriguing tradition of tracing the roots of Jewish powerlessness to Judaism...
March, 2008
Ostriker Reviewed Cheryl Goldstein
Reviewed: Alicia Ostriker, For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book Rutgers University Press, 2007 During my relatively brief sojourn in...
February, 2008
Roth, Babel, and a Question of Blood Val Vinokur
A half century before lamenting in Exit Ghost the man he once was and no longer is, Philip Roth’s protagonist and alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman...
February, 2008
Festival of Cant: The “Israel Lobby” and Abraham Foxman Gordon Haber
Reviewed: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. The Deadliest Lies: The...
December, 2007
History for the Untrained: A Look at Six Days Ron Nachmann
Reviewed: 1967: Israel, The War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East Tom Segev. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Metropolitan Books, 2007. In a 2002...
December, 2007
Temporary Like Zuckerman: Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Reviewed: Phillip Roth, Exit Ghost Houghton Mifflin, 2007 Now the word of the Lord came to Nathan Zuckerman – Philip Roth’s counter-life hero in...
October, 2007
Diamond in the Rough David Stromberg
In his new collection, The Family Diamond, Edward Schwarzschild, author of the novel Responsible Men asks if being good is the same as doing the...
October, 2007
We Ourselves Are to Blame: Hannah Arendt’s Jewish Writings Zachary Braiterman
Reviewed: Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings Schocken Books, 2007 In dark times such as our own, a flurry of publications attests to the abiding importance...
September, 2007
Review: A Restless Anthropologist: Primo Levi’s “A Tranquil Star” Jacob Howland
Reviewed:Primo LeviA Tranquil Star: Unpublished StoriesNorton, 2007. Over food and wine in a mountain hut, an anonymous narrator recounts a daring Alpine adventure into which...
August, 2007
A Long Way from Zion: Michael Chabon's Yiddish Noir Joshua Furst
Reviewed: Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen’s Union HarperCollins, 2007 Michael Chabon knows how to shmear it on. In the debate between art and entertainment, he...
July, 2007
Story of the Stones Benjamin David
Reviewed: Haim Watzman A Crack in the Earth: A Journey up Israel's Rift Valley Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 I remember standing atop Masada...
June, 2007
Mothers, Daughters, and the Word: Talking with Yael Goldstein Miriam Cohen
With book jackets prominently displaying Chagall prints and faded black and white photos of Holocaust-era Poland, many of today’s up-and-coming Jewish American writers are...
June, 2007
Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases: Two Reviews by Zeek Jay Michaelson and Peter Bebergal
Fantasy and Totalitarianism: On Ministering to Special CasesJay Michaelson Even if you're Nathan Englander, inventor of the prostitution-prescribing rabbi, truth is stranger than fiction. Like...
May, 2007
A World Written: In Conversation with Tamar Yellin Dr. Dan Friedman
For a poet the principal unit of beauty is the line: for a prose writer it is the sentence. Crafting sentences which construct the line...
May, 2007
Russian as an American Language: A Conversation with Anya Ulinich David Stromberg
Anna Sergeievna Ulinich did not necessarily set out to be a writer. She did not necessarily set out to be a Soviet immigrant in America...
March, 2007
A Will to Powerlessness: Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures David Stromberg
Reviewed: Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures, Anchor, 2006 After encountering the variety of slightly more (or slightly less) fantastical characters appearing in Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures...
February, 2007
Pogrom Pop: T Cooper's Lipshitzes Elizabeth Isadora Gold
Reviewed: Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes by T Cooper Dutton, 2006 My college boyfriend’s grandmother was from Poland. Mushkie came to Chicago as...
July, 2006
Live By No Man's Code: The Religious Forms of Philip Roth's "Everyman" Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Winner of a Rockower Ribbon. Reviewed: Phillip Roth, Everyman Houghton Mifflin, 2006 Once upon a time old school analyst Dr. Spielvogel diagnosed his patient's...
June, 2006
The Nazi in the Nursing Home Jeremy Mullem
Reviewed: Michael Lavigne, Not Me (Random House, 2006) What differentiates the Holocaust from the great human crimes of the years since is less the scale...
February, 2006
Essay
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July, 2009
A Sephardic Answer to Modern Jewish Identity David Rabeeya
Sephardim are not new to America: the US’ oldest congregation is the Sephardic Shearith Israel While no one can estimate the exact number of Sephardic...
March, 2008
Jewish Mysticism in the University: Academic Study or Theological Practice? Boaz Huss
This essay is based upon a lecture given on May 30, 2006, as part of the program: "The Academy and Spirituality: Can They Go Together?"...
December, 2007
Against Mourning Anne Goldman
Jews are not the only people ravaged by memory. For African Americans, it is the long arm of slavery that holds back the living. “…[m]ama...
December, 2007
A Jewish Tree Hugger's Plea Moshe Kornfeld
And you shall reduce, reuse, and recycle with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your resources. And concern for...
August, 2007
Inside the German Brain: An English Neurosurgeon Abroad Simon Shaw
Once you get used to the smell of formaldehyde, operating on the heads of cadavers is one of the pleasures of being a surgeon. Cutting...
July, 2007
The History of "Tikkun Olam" Jill Jacobs
There may be no other term that is simultaneously as beloved and as reviled in Jewish progressive circles as the phrase “tikkun olam.” For some...
June, 2007
The Languages of Vilnius Jordan Benjamin
My great-grandfather was born in Vilnius in the late 19th century. After immigrating to America in his early 20s, he changed his last name from...
May, 2007
Jobnik!: A Good Jewish Girl Gone Better Mordecai Drache
I lived in a neighborhood renowned for its ugliness and unlivability and worked with its children. It overpowered me sometimes though, how much I...
February, 2007
Like an Eco-Kosher Jewish Farmer Led to Slaughter Alexander Sharone
For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings. - Hosea 6:6 The act of milking is about...
January, 2007
Funny Antisemitism is Good for the Jews Dan Friedman
When Jerome O’Malley calls you a “Fucking Yid” in the playground, that’s antisemitism. When your friend gets beaten up at a bus stop for...
November, 2006
Welcome to the New Zeek The Editors
To our readers, subscribers, and community of contributors: We are very pleased to welcome you this month to the new Zeek.net. Together with our new...
November, 2006
Parallel Worlds: Some Hasidic Tales Shaun Levin
About five years ago I taught English to a group of Hasidic men in North London. I realised when I took the job that I’d...
October, 2006
Israeli-American Yoav Fisher
I sat with my uncle outside Boudin Bakery on Ofarrell drinking cappuccino and sharing a scone. It was a glorious Saturday afternoon in downtown San...
July, 2006
Shiatsu Jeffrey Green
1. I would never submit to shiatsu massages for three reasons: I don’t like having strangers touch me; I begrudge the expense; and I...
July, 2006
Leaving Homeland Sara Sherbill
I am back in the place that I wanted to get away from, with its self-styled citizenry; its self-proclaimed superiority; its forest of buildings...
May, 2006
Move Over Starbucks: Israel’s “Upside Down” Coffee Saga Esther Solomon
1. The Drug of Choice My name is Esther and I’m a recovering addict. On a good day, I would have only one. On...
April, 2006
Something that isn't war Joanna Steinhardt
I had posted a profile on a site years before and never took it down. There were occasional responses. In one, a man wrote,...
March, 2006
What Happens Next? Robbie Gringras
You see, it all begins with Mohammed. Not the prophet... The baker. Mohammed the baker. This guy that I met... What happens next? It's...
February, 2006
Fiction
The Bank Teller’s Game Michael Brodsky
Called by Library Journal “one of the most important writers working today,” Michael Brodsky is very much a writer for an idealized tomorrow. He...
April, 2008
What He Can’t Do Anymore Ron Leshem
Israeli fiction has long depicted the experience of war. Short stories and novels by writers such as Yehoshua Kenaz, Benjamin Tammuz, and S. Yizhar...
January, 2008
Light Fell Evan Fallenberg
After changing into a roomy housedress and a knitted sweater pulled loose with age and use, Rebecca sneaks out the front of the house as...
December, 2007
Another Place, A Foreign City—An Excerpt Maya Arad
Maya Arad’s novel in verse, Another Place, A Foreign City appeared in late 2003 and quickly became one of the most successful books of...
December, 2007
Blessed are the Merciful, For They Shall Obtain Mercy Agur Schiff
The short story is a demanding form, far less forgiving than the novel. And while many of Israel’s best known writers are justly celebrated...
November, 2007
The Other Air Dalia Rosenfeld
I had been sighing a lot. A breath would rise from within me, then slowly release itself, like a failed note from a broken...
November, 2007
“Killers”: Excerpted from I Did It My Way Yoram Kaniuk
Yoram Kaniuk says that he has died at least twice. And while that’s something of an exaggeration, there’s no question he has had enough...
October, 2007
Matrimony: An Excerpt Joshua Henkin
Out! Out! Out! The first words Julian Wainwright ever spoke, according to his father, Richard Wainwright III, graduate of Yale and grand lubricator of the...
October, 2007
Trudy’s Wedding Jon Papernick
Trudy Schwartzstein had planned her second and final wedding to be perfect: idyllic beside a shimmering blue pond, almost Gatsbyesque, reminiscent of another, more hopeful...
September, 2007
Snapshots: An Excerpt Michal Govrin
Acclaimed author Michal Govrin’s Snapshots, excerpted here for the first time, received Israel’s 2003 AKUM Prize. Govrin’s hybrid text draws from traditional Jewish sources...
September, 2007
Water Yechezkel Rachamim
Today’s vibrant Israeli literary scene features many journals dedicated to arts, culture, and literature. Publications such as Emda, Ho!, Keshet HaChadasha, Masmerim, and Mita’am,...
August, 2007
Festival of Lights Ayelet Ben-Ziv
The Hebrew term for the act of leaving Israel to live abroad – yerida, or “descent” – contains a pointed reproach. Small wonder, then,...
July, 2007
In Vincoli Jeffrey M. Green
“Divorce her! Divorce her! He told him, but he said she was sick and she needed him. He's the Jewish chaplain on an air...
July, 2007
Two Excerpts from Tsalka's Alef-Bet Dan Tsalka
During a recent visit to Israel I met with Jonathan Nadav, publisher of Xargol Books and friend to the late Dan Tsalka. There, in...
June, 2007
Shadow Play Amir Gutfreund
Translated by Jessica Cohen A Note from the Editor This month’s story from Amir Gutfreund, winner of the Sami Rohr Prize “Choice Award” for his...
May, 2007
Sting: An Excerpt from "Preliminaries" S. Yizhar
A Note from the Editor This month Zeek offers readers a preview of S. Yizhar’s Preliminaries, beautifully rendered in English by acclaimed translator Nicholas...
April, 2007
Three Short Stories Reuven Miran
A Note from the Editor Zeek is proud to present these three stories from noted author Reuven Miran’s Memories of a Dead Season. First...
March, 2007
Behind the Sun Efrat Naveh
In Memory of Prof. Gershon Shaked 1929-2006 On December 28, 2006, the eve of the launch of Zeek’s first monthly Hebrew translation feature, news...
February, 2007
Behind the Sun Efrat Naveh
In Memory of Prof. Gershon Shaked 1929-2006 On December 28, 2006, the eve of the launch of Zeek’s first monthly Hebrew translation feature, news...
February, 2007
Protection Moshe Ron
A note from the editor S. Y. Agnon wrote: "Every book one opens, one finds in it things not found before." Beginning this month,...
January, 2007
Start Making Sense: The "Elaborate Nonsense" of Poles, Jews, and the Holocaust Mordecai Drache
In late May 2000, a slim Polish edition of a work originally published by Princeton University Press – which by all accounts should have remained...
January, 2007
The Unadulterated Projectionist David Stromberg
Book I: A Journal of Mistaken Philosophies It was some forty-five years ago, just as my parents disappeared, that the Scheinhorn family sent me...
December, 2006
Boruchov Street Jerome Eric Copulsky
I was searching for Boruchov Street. In the early afternoon, after the rain, I went searching for Boruchov Street. It wasn't on the map,...
November, 2006
What Keeps Us Awake Chanel Dubofsky
On Friday evenings they play Scrabble, a whole crowd of them. They use books to keep score, page numbers, instead of a long column of...
October, 2006
How I Live. With Terror. Deborah S. Greenhut
Characters: From 1 to 20. Setting: A stage. Time: After the pirates. Scenery: None. Lights: Until the end. (Lights up.) I On November 5, 2005,...
September, 2006
Don Flamenco’s Finest Round Seth Harwood
Drew looked me up and down. He said, “Tell me I can’t rip your head off.” I didn’t say anything. He made fists and opened...
August, 2006
Waiting for Broza Irene de la Torre
Sara kept her eyes on the passengers who got off the plane; she was afraid that if she took her eyes off of them, Eyal...
May, 2006
With A Strong Hand And An Outstretched Arm Jeremy Mullem
The story, as I have planned it, as I have imagined it over these last five years, unfolds in most dramatic part at a Passover...
April, 2006
My Dear Son Franz Stephen E. Tabachnick
My Dear Son Franz, Your detailed letter outlining my influence on your personal development shows that you are indeed a writer. I doubt if any...
March, 2006
Jay
Sick Enough for Religion Jay Michaelson
One should note that Joseph often cried. In fact there are no less that eight references in the Torah to him doing so. One...
April, 2008
The Blues, Prayer, and Unrequited Love Jay Michaelson
"The Blues ain't about making yourself feel better," said Bleeding Gums Murphy to Lisa Simpson, "it's about making other people feel worse." Sing on, Bleeding...
March, 2008
Polytheism and Nonduality Jay Michaelson
It is a noteworthy paradox of religion that those traditions which most embrace nonduality also embrace polytheism. Hinduism is the greatest example, accommodating within itself...
February, 2008
It's the Deep Structure, Stupid Jay Michaelson
We are creatures of narrative. Our sacred myths, our everyday lives, and our political minds all are built upon stories; narrative is how we organize...
December, 2007
A BuJu Responds to Sam Harris Jay Michaelson
When people used to say "I believe in God," they meant it in the way one might mean "I believe in you." It was a...
November, 2007
The Gifts of Boredom Jay Michaelson
And we were never being boring That’s why we were never being bored - Pet Shop Boys There is, in a sense, no such...
September, 2007
Entering the Gate of Sadness Jay Michaelson
This is about what always is and what only sometimes is. This is about the paradox that sadness and joy are the same. This is...
August, 2007
Free Will: The Last Gasp of the Unenlightened Mind Jay Michaelson
"Everything is foreseen; yet free will is given" - Pirkei Avot 3:15 Much of Western ethics, religious and secular, seems to rely on the...
July, 2007
Why I Study Sabbateanism Jay Michaelson
The story I tell people is this: I went to Israel in 2005 to become a rabbi and study Hasidism. I left in 2006, a...
June, 2007
Getting Serious About a Religion of Love Jay Michaelson
1. That's the Way I Like It Over the last two months in these pages, I have described how the Jewish religious path has become,...
April, 2007
Keep Your Godwrestling, Thanks: The Uses and Limits of Theology Jay Michaelson
1. Doing the things that we want to For progressive, Jewishly-educated twenty- and thirty-somethings, it's very fashionable to struggle. We encounter problematic texts, we wrestle...
March, 2007
Stop Seeking: Paradoxes of the Spiritual Path Jay Michaelson
1. Stopping Seeking Takes Seeking My new computer desktop catches attention sometimes. "Stop seeking," it says in large white print, surrounded by black. This,...
February, 2007
Zeek is not a Gay Magazine (but it is Out) Jay Michaelson
1. Gay/Not Gay Well, it happened again. Another journalist has covered Zeek, and has singled out homosexuality as an important, even central, theme of this...
January, 2007
Religion and Insanity Jay Michaelson
1. Mother Eagle A friend of mine is getting into angels, and I don't know what to do. The problem is that for the last...
December, 2006
Kashrut and Nonduality Jay Michaelson
What is spirituality? To many people, spirituality is about having certain feelings, and spiritual practices are those actions which bring the feelings about. Light the...
November, 2006
Yom Kippur and Nonduality Jay Michaelson
What is the meaning of repentance, if everything is God? On the purely cognitive level, the answer is not complicated. All of us live within...
October, 2006
Spirituality in a Time of Seriousness: Levels and Religion Jay Michaelson
1. Baking a Cake for Israel One of my favorite Onion articles came two weeks after September 11. The satirical newspaper had begun in a...
August, 2006
My Journey to Flexidoxy - or, At Home on the Slippery Slope Jay Michaelson
1. Weaving When I was in my twenties, I wrote a book on the philosophy of halacha, as I had come to understand it over...
July, 2006
Fear of Fun Jay Michaelson
1. As I approach my 35th birthday, I wonder if I'm having too much fun. Surely by now I should settle down, stop going to...
June, 2006
The Freedom of Being Jay Michaelson
Delight is the secret. And the secret is this: to grow quiet and listen; to stop thinking, stop moving, almost to stop breathing; to...
April, 2006
Flakes Jay Michaelson
Why are so many spiritual people unreliable and self-involved?
March, 2006
Christmas in Jerusalem Jay Michaelson
I had forgotten it was Christmas, thank God. It was only on the bus that I remembered -- I was riding on the number 18,...
January, 2006
Music
From Oi to Oy: is Hardcore Punk Suddenly Kosher? Steven Lee Beeber
In the beginning, they said, let there be light - a festival of lights - Eight Crazy Nights of them. And so there was. And...
February, 2008
Revelation Time Joel Schalit
As any electronic or hip-hop artist will tell you, one of the most important aspects of making music is capturing the right sample. Not...
February, 2008
Sacha Baron Cohen's iPod Sacha Baron Cohen
For our Winter 2007 music-themed print issue, we asked Sacha Baron Cohen, a/k/a Borat, a/k/a Ali G., a/k/a member of Zeek's advisory board, to tell...
January, 2008
Music, Moonshine, and Mahjong Kurt Gegenhuber
Over the past 18 months, I have dedicated my personal life primarily to researching the facts surrounding the 1927 recording – in St. Paul, Minnesota...
September, 2007
He’s Not There (2007): Talkin’ Bob Dylan Symposium Blues Stephen Hazan Arnoff
A group of some one hundred and fifty scholars, writers, musicians, critics, and other careful listeners came to Highway 61 Revisited: Dylan’s Road from Minnesota...
June, 2007
I Dream of Amy Scott Korb
For the first time in several weeks I got up this morning with a song that wasn’t Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” running through my head. Though...
May, 2007
Mah Nishtanah? Michael Dorf and the Downtown Seder Peter Bebergal
More than fashion, more than film, even more than television, music drives culture in America. And as America goes, so go the Jews. But despite...
April, 2007
Will Holshouser Speaks the Language of Klezmer Peter Bebergal
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March, 2007
Aliza Hava Has an Axe to Grind Peter Bebergal
var myQTObject = new QTObject("/music/alizahava_worthofwater.mp3", "cover", "250", "20");myQTObject.addParam("autoplay", "false"); myQTObject.addParam("controller", "true"); myQTObject.addParam("loop", "false"); myQTObject.addParam("volume", "100"); myQTObject.write(); You must enable Javascript to view this content....
February, 2007
Ask a Jew a Question and Get a Y-Love Answer Peter Bebergal
Listen: Mehadrin Rhymin from Y-Love's forthcoming LP This is Babylon.Download free MP3 “Sing to the Lord a new song... sing to the Lord, all the...
January, 2007
Talat: Music That Won't Get Lost Peter Bebergal
Listen "Tzahor" from Talat's debut CD Growl. Download free MP3 "You know her life was saved by Rock 'n' Roll" -Velvet Underground I know mine...
December, 2006
In Memoriam: Welcome to Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" Stephen Hazan Arnoff
When Mikhal Gilmore of Rolling Stone asked Bob Dylan about the significance of the release of his album Love and Theft on September 11, 2001,...
October, 2006
My Life as a Jewish Hare Krishna Skinhead Sascha Gottschalk
From a very early time in my life, I had a clear idea what Jewish boys were supposed to be like, how they behaved,...
August, 2006
Contemporary Psychedelia: From Transcendence to Immanence Peter Bebergal
1. Tripping Out and Tuning In What is psychedelia? What is loosely termed 'psychedelic music' has lately undergone a resurgence. Many mainstream musicians such...
June, 2006
What's the Frequency, Joshua? Julie Blattberg
Joshua Fried at the Cornelia Street cafe
February, 2006
Poetry
Yiddish Poems by Boris Karloff Boris Karloff
Mastermind It seems clear that all is gone, All in all and one by one, Yet pretending it doesn't matter Greeting with a smile...
April, 2008
Between Linda Zisquit
This poem was originally published in April, 2007, in the Spring/Summer 2007 print edition of Zeek. Our print edition features original articles, essays, poems, and...
March, 2008
The Accidental Aryan Jonathan Everett Maseng
Hatred is a lake as on a burning day a child comes to low himself upon the bank. So long he dangles daring toe...
February, 2008
Poems by Yerra Sugarman Yerra Sugarman
ASH AND SCAR Their possible crumbled; consolation held captive in the blasted hive of a once Room. And shabby were the clusters of rain...
February, 2008
Late Love Poem Shirley Kaufman
I’d like to be soft bread fresh from the oven fragrant and warm about to be eaten. I need your hands to hold and shape...
January, 2008
B’rachot: A Catalog and Three Friends Patty Seyburn
for Sydney One for grass (field of sighs). One, perfect pitch (voice’s veil). Clocks (sun’s ascent, demise) – you name it: blessed, wholesale. One...
January, 2008
Three Poems by Alicia Ostriker Alicia Ostriker
The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog To be blessed said the old woman is to have so many grandchildren love...
December, 2007
Boaz Kadman: A Selection Boaz Kadman
Visual Artist Boaz Kadman works in a manner that is self-deprecating, satiric, and tongue-in-cheek, but also smart, forthright, and serious. From large-scale installation pieces...
December, 2007
Three Poems by Rodger Kamenetz Rodger Kamenetz
The Real The word “real”-- completely vexed foreign word we use every day– “get real man”-- “reality tv” oxymoron– not to be confused with...
November, 2007
In The Beginning Jake Marmer
people are for sure dancing somewhere with scrolls. My calendar says, and it’s not like I don’t know. In this bar, nobody rolls anything...
October, 2007
Poems - With an Introduction by Ilan Stavans Isaac Goldemberg
Isaac Goldemberg's maturity as a writer has come along with an increasing disdain for realism. His earlier work, especially his best-known novel, The Fragmented...
September, 2007
The Canary (Interior Design) Tal Nitzan
We’ll move the canary from the kitchen to the bath we’ll move the computer from the terrace to the kitchen the boy with his room...
August, 2007
like a fish Julie Meslin
this week, may you be like a fish in the flood. that is, may you always keep your eyes open, even during sleep and...
July, 2007
Matchmaker Charles Rammelkamp
"Matchmaker, hell," Leah spat, "more like a pimp." She'd just heard the rabbi's eulogy for her sister Essie's dead husband Marvin. The rabbi portrayed...
June, 2007
Blessing / Curse Dan Bellm
Blessing Only one per family. One people per world. Conditional, like love. A mercy for him that gives and him that takes. The soul...
May, 2007
The Exile and The Shank: Two Poems by Philip Terman Philip Terman
The Exile I deliver a box of matzo to the only trailer with a mezuzah nailed to the doorframe. She rents from the trucker and...
April, 2007
At the Mikveh, Age Four Maureen Sherbondy
For weeks my brothers flooded me with tales of drowning, said the special pool was where young girls sank and did not rise again....
March, 2007
Variations on a Theme by Wiesel Richard Chess
The day I received American citizenship . . . the Jew in me was overcome by a feeling of pride mixed with gratitude. Elie...
March, 2007
The Hidden Ones Steve Tarlow
In those years the best disguised Themselves and went into exile. They wandered from village To village, looking for degradation. Exile was their answer...
February, 2007
On Jewish Writing Hugh Behm-Steinberg
1. She was eating a sandwich. What is Jewish writing? If I am Jewish, is that poem I showed you Jewish? If you are Jewish,...
February, 2007
The Orange Came First Ruth Knafo Setton
The orange came first- was there ever a doubt? Not to us, who worked the pardess. 4 a.m., riding to the grove on the...
January, 2007
Shulamith Speaks Jehanne Dubrow
It’s also speech—those words his body chalks on me, and I on him, our sheet-white terms which need no voice to occupy a room. I...
December, 2006
untitled Nurit Zarhi
The rain reveals the hidden names of leaves my heart warm as if washed in blood a new season love cruising in our tiny...
December, 2006
Broyer as with Centuries or Meat Nathalie Stephens
The thing came at me in this precise way: As the face -- the face on a small body perhaps. As the small body...
December, 2006
Bzura Susan H. Case
She has three last names none real. One for each marriage and one mangled from a trip through Ellis Island (as if that kerchiefed...
November, 2006
When She Goes Out Alone Hedva Harehavi
credit1=Image: Jay Michaelson, Moontree
November, 2006
First Ending of the Fairytale Ilya Kaminsky
To your voice, a mysterious virtue, to the 53 bones of one foot, the four dimensions of breathing, to pine, redwood, sworn-fern, peppermint, to...
October, 2006
The Apple, the Cucumber, and the Plum Dan Armon
The fruit is done. Now it has touched the bounds of its form, ripens toward what's beyond, and with a sweet longing turns to rot...
October, 2006
Everyone Who Goes There Says You Can’t Imagine Rachel Zucker
Today the pigeons tack in flocks above the city, the air crisp, forgetful. A plume became a cloud became a plume became a fog, No!...
September, 2006
In Time Ruth Blumbert
In time, when the sign is given, you'll find that you only were chosen to see and understand what it is then you'll flee...
September, 2006
Now the beautiful boys ... Miodrag Kojadinović
Now the beautiful boys are no longer. A man in a plastic orange cloak has piled empty soft drinks cans on a black sheet....
August, 2006
Summer Shin Shifra
Dry thorns like a camp of crusaders limbs slashed only the points of blades the jutting of helmets-- in the rooms blinds are drawn...
July, 2006
Camp Stone Tetherball Abby Glogower
Boys, Boys Boys with bruises On their wrists Air Jordans and tzitzis Their crocheted yarmulkes And their way of seeing things: Taking a girls’...
July, 2006
The Water Queen of Jerusalem Rahel Chalfi
The Water Queen of Jerusalem dives into history history is hard and she grows fins she has no air and she schemes gills rowing...
June, 2006
Waters of Jerusalem David Goldstein
We were doing the pajama dance, throwing our arms up in the air and singing Ay-yay-yay-yay-yay! when Waters of Jerusalem called. We were watching...
June, 2006
A Different Sensation Asher Reich
Poetry will steer me to another recollection, a different sensation: years later your image suddenly before me like a luminous landscape of yourself rising from...
May, 2006
Nomad Land Corie Feiner
1. The wooden slats I call shelter are a thatch, a barn, a quiet cross over my heart. A needle can be the difference between...
May, 2006
Jews of the Mystic River Miriam Sagan
Not Poland, or Gan Eden But East Boston Where narrative is history And history is geographic Mensheviks Bolsheviks Trotskyists, of course Those who parse Gematria...
May, 2006
David won't read Howl Joseph Dobkin
David won't read howl But what does he know He never piled up papers and spun His head the way I do He says he's...
April, 2006
A SOUR PICKLE THE ANGEL OF DEATH Israel Har
My father passed away like a Jew: unprepared. He knew where he came from he knew where he's headed always saw it before him...
March, 2006
Holy Thighs Ruth Knafo Setton
I know why you went to Israel, land of milk and honey: my sweet lord, Jesus or Yahweh or Allah. You wanted to walk His...
February, 2006
Carobs Elisha Porat
Do you remember, in Juara, at the end of my platoon leaders course, in that rainy December? I took the wet military blanket on...
January, 2006
Politics
ZEEK ADDS NEW CONTENT DAILY AT WWW.JEWCY.COM/ZEEK Check out our new posts at Jewcy here
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June, 2008
Shoah Madness Mitchell Plitnick
Translation is not the simple act of looking a word up in a dictionary. Cultural connotation and context are often crucial to understanding a translation...
April, 2008
Revelation Time Joel Schalit
As any electronic or hip-hop artist will tell you, one of the most important aspects of making music is capturing the right sample. Not...
February, 2008
Justice in a Time of Madness - Righteousness Ain’t as Easy as it Looks Roger S. Gottlieb
To call for justice is at the same time to rail against its opposite. From Jewish prophets to contemporary public interest groups, from democracy seeking...
January, 2008
An Afternoon with Mubarak Awad Robert Hirschfield
Lost in the white summer heat of Friendship Heights, and diabolically misdirected, I see a car pull up to the curb. Mubarak Awad waves me...
January, 2008
Rebuilding Israel’s Utopia James Horrox
For nearly a century, the Israeli kibbutz represented one of the most celebrated success stories of the twentieth century socialist left. In this federated network...
October, 2007
Sleeping with One Eye Open: Israel at Sixty Scott Copeland
Usually I sleep well. Along our quiet suburban street on the outskirts of Jerusalem, with the lights of Ramot and Beit Iqsa watching each other...
October, 2007
Creating a Sustainable Jewish Ecology Ellen Bernstein
In December, 2004 Adam Werbach, a young Jew committed to tikkun olam, gave a stirring talk to the San Francisco Commonwealth Club pronouncing the death...
October, 2007
False Memory: Misusing History in the Arab-Israeli Conflict Roi Ben-Yehuda
One of the most interesting aspects of Arab-Israeli conflict polemics is the way in which its participants frequently invoke medieval and early modern Jewish-Muslim history...
August, 2007
Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Boundaries of Dissent: Round 2 of the Alvin Rosenfeld Debate Shaul Magid and Paul Bogdanor
The Jewish world is abuzz with Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld's controversial report, "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism," which claims that progressive Jews have...
April, 2007
Hot Times in the Holy Land: The Effects of Global Climate Change on Israel Professor Alon Tal
Ten thousand years ago, hippopotami roamed a much more humid Sahara region in Africa that was filled with lakes and vegetation. Similarly, Israel’s climate of...
April, 2007
Four Questions, Five Answers: On Passover, Peoplehood, and Policy Yosef Israel Abramowitz and Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Even if all of us were wise and knowing sages in full command of Torah learning, it would still be a religious obligation upon us...
April, 2007
South of the Border: Talking Peoplehood with Yossi Abramowitz Stephen Hazan Arnoff
Jewish life in North America is no longer the cultural wasteland it was just ten years ago. Thanks to a host of independent enterprises, like...
November, 2006
What is Terrorism, and Why We Need to Define It Dr. Dan Friedman
While Alice is Through the Looking Glass she argues with Humpty Dumpty over his use of the word “glory” to denote not the usual meanings...
September, 2006
Voting Kinky: The Politics of Ridicule Sarah Lefton
"An Asshole from El Paso": Kinky Friedman Kinky Friedman is out to save the world, in his words, “one governor at a time.” He's out...
June, 2006
France’s Jewish Prophets: Alain Finkielkraut, Albert Memmi, and the Looming Crisis of Liberalism Dr. Michael Shurkin
French Jews have long had a privileged relationship with their country’s intellectual life. Sometime they have been an object of intellectual effervescence – as at...
May, 2006
Friends in High Places: An Interview with Congressmen Barney Frank and Gary Ackerman Jay Michaelson
The news cycle in Israel is short -- very short. Just two weeks ago, when I interviewed Congressman Barney Frank and Gary Ackerman after a...
February, 2006
The Other Zionist Conspiracy: A History of Christian Zionism Valerie Saturen
The 2004 U.S. presidential elections left little doubt about the rise of the Christian Right. Polls indicated that “moral values” topped the list of voter...
February, 2006
Dear Mr. Pinter Dan Friedman
I am writing in response to your discussion of contemporary Anglo-American geopolitics and its relation to “truth” in your recent Nobel Lecture, “Art, Truth, &...
January, 2006
Spirit
The Russification of Jewish-American Fiction Andrew Furman
What would our Passover Seders have been like without our unfortunate brethren suffering under the Soviet yoke? “In every generation,” our Haggadahs insisted, “we must...
April, 2008
Street Seders for the Global Climate Crisis Rabbi Jeff Sultar
This year, Passover converges with Earth Day. And it does so at a time when the global climate crisis can no longer be ignored, calling...
April, 2008
Love and the Bible: A Conversation with Ilan Stavans Mordecai Drache
In a series of six conversations and an epilogue recently published in book form under the title of Love and Language (Yale University Press, with...
March, 2008
Is Kabbalah Mysticism? Continuing the Debate Shaul Magid and Boaz Huss
Is Kabbala Mysticism? Another View by Shaul Magid I In a provocative essay “Jewish Mysticism in the University: Academic Study or Theological Practice?” (Zeek...
March, 2008
Lech Lecha, or: How Israeli Jews Find Renewal in Diaspora David Gottlieb
Awakening late to my Judaism--as so many American Jews do--I came to a realization both strange and wonderful: there are Israelis in my midst! At...
February, 2008
A Triumphalist Table of In/Compatibility of other Religions with Judaism Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi
Editors Note: In the 1960s, Rabbi Zalman Schachter (as he was then called) was one of the few Jewish leaders supportive of young Jews' explorations...
February, 2008
Why Pray? Rami Shapiro
This essay was originally published in April, 2007, in the Spring/Summer 2007 print edition of Zeek. Our print edition features original articles, essays, poems,...
February, 2008
DIY Judaism: A Roundtable on the Independant Minyan Phenomenon Shifra Bronznick
Jewish prayer requires a community of ten - a minyan - but not a rabbi or a congregation. For most of the past century, when...
January, 2008
Independent Minyanim and Prayer Groups of the 1970s: Historical and Sociological Perspectives Riv-Ellen Prell
In the last decade, observers of American Jewish life have noted the appearance of independent prayer groups (minyanim) in many major centers of Jewish life...
January, 2008
Stacking the Plastic Chairs: Running an Egalitarian Minyan in Jerusalem Ilana Kurshan
I had a roommate living with me for three weeks last winter. She didn’t make any noise, and never left any clutter - but living...
January, 2008
What Independent Minyanim Teach Us About the Next Generation of Jewish Communities Ethan Tucker
In the last decade, a host of independent minyanim have sprung up in Jewish communities in North America and throughout the world. While the overall...
January, 2008
Why Social Justice Needs Religion Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Globalization is the extreme expression of capitalism; it functions under the sign of alienation. The irony of globalization is that, as the world draws closer...
December, 2007
Rethinking Kashrut: An Interview with Rabbi Morris Allen Rachel Barenblat
Rabbi Morris Allen is at the forefront of the hechsher tzedek movement, a grassroots effort to change the way Jews think about kashrut. The hechsher...
November, 2007
The Sanctuary of Melody Eliezer Sobel
Elie Wiesel once said of Hasidic singing that it will "drive your soul out of yourself in order that it may rejoin its Source and...
November, 2007
Reimagining the Tabernacle: America’s First Green Synagogue Maya Schenwar
Chicago’s Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC)—the synagogue of my youth—is about to become the first LEED-certified green synagogue in the United States. Needing new space, the...
November, 2007
Making Room for the Divine She Julia Watts Belser
I met God the summer I turned fourteen, standing on the patio beyond my grandparents’ kitchen and letting the gravel stones slip through my fingers...
August, 2007
The Twisted Wick: Talmud Study as Spiritual Practice for Post-Modern Jews Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla
I found God hanging out innocuously on a page of my Talmud within an obscure legal debate over whether or not a twisted wick is...
July, 2007
Sabbatai Zevi at Prayer David J. Halperin
Sabbatai Zevi (1626-76) was the most notorious Jewish Messianic claimant since Jesus of Nazareth. Born in Izmir, on the western coast of Turkey, he declared...
June, 2007
A Hymn of Praise to Sabbatei Zevi Translated by Gavriel Wasserman
At the height of his popularity, Sabbatai Zevi could count among his followers up to one third of European Jewry. Even after his apostasy,...
June, 2007
Zionism and Gnosticism Dr. Yotam Hotam
The world around us has changed. I don’t refer to the obvious changes that science can easily detect such as global warming, but rather to...
June, 2007
The House of the Messiah in Ruins Photographs by Barry Kapandji
There is a house, or the ruins of one, at 920 Agora Girisi, in the old part of Izmir (formerly Smyrna), Turkey, which believers say...
June, 2007
Shoshana Gugenheim: Woman of the Book Rachel Barenblat
Born and raised in the United States and now living in Jerusalem, fiber, mosaic, and calligraphy artist Shoshana Gugenheim has spent the last decade of...
June, 2007
Hillel Zeitlin: The Foundations of Hasidism Rabbi Or N. Rose
Translator's Introduction Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942), journalist, political activist, poet, and mystical author, was born and raised in the village of Korma in White Russia,...
May, 2007
Hearing Beneath the Surface: Crossing Gender Boundaries at the Ari Mikveh Tucker Lieberman
An Unorthodox Body My body is not an abomination but it is unorthodox. Like many Jews, at the age of 24 I joined the Birthright...
March, 2007
David Ingber: Shaping an Integral Judaism Rachel Barenblat
The upper room at Algiers teahouse is one of my favorite spots in the greater Boston area: high wooden ceilings, curved windows, and arched doorways....
March, 2007
Ari Weller is in the Happiness Business Rachel Barenblat
A note from the editor You know the feeling you get when you read a particularly thought-provoking book or hear an excellent lecture or...
January, 2007
Rav Kook: Poet of Renewal Translations by Itzchak Marmorstein. Introduction by Rachel Barenblat
Itzchak Marmorstein was born in Israel in 1951, the only child of two Holocaust survivors. His family moved to Canada when he was eight;...
December, 2006
To See a Face is to Accept the Kingdom of Heaven Abraham Mezrich
1. The Talmud asks the question why God needed to create each of us with a different face. In fact the Talmud gives not one...
November, 2006
God on Ecstasy Raucha Mayim
The moonlight sparked and popped across the sand and pirouetted along the surface of the Dead Sea. As we entered the hot-spring-fed pool, the boisterous...
October, 2006
Creeds are the Ashes from the Fire of Religion Joshua Liebman (and colleague)
The author of the article “Allegation Versus Aspiration” which appeared in the Hebrew Union College Monthly of April 1929 offers the following answers to questions...
September, 2006
Tisha B'Av Alicia Jo Rabins
I wake up in a Bushwick loft on Tisha B’Av the safe looks at me with its one notched and numbered eye winking: remember...
August, 2006
The Tree of Life Yoseph Leib
1. Timothy Leary calls the Biblical prohibition against eating from the Tree of Knowledge the beginning of the control of substances. Eden is the first...
June, 2006
Aliyah: Trans(Per)forming Jewish Ritual Luke Dzmura
The body is nothing more than a garment. When they are naming souls in the upper world and they call out “So-and-So, the daughter...
May, 2006
An Encounter with Truth Yashar-El Emunah
I was lying with my partner. It was in the afternoon... or was it at the crack of dawn early in the morning. We...
May, 2006
The Power and the Glory: A Critique of "New Age" Kabbalah Dr. Jonathan Garb
And who by brave assent, who by accident, who in solitude, who in this mirror, who by his lady's command, who by his own...
April, 2006
Wrestling with Esther: Purim Spiels, Gender, and Political Dissidence Emily Nepon
1. A Drag King’s Bar Mitzvah In 1999 I won the Philadelphia Drag King contest with my portrayal of metal-head bar mitzvah boy Ben...
March, 2006
The Piyyut is Jewish Soul Music Basmat Hazan Arnoff
Reveal Yourself my Dearest, And spread over me Your canopy of peace. Let the earth shine with Your glory, Let us rejoice in You....
March, 2006
A parable on the state of the Jewish mythic world after my hard drive crashed Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
My hard drive and motherboard crashed. If you have experienced this breakdown of the extension of your memory, these tools which hold your information,...
January, 2006
Translation
The Mystery of Jewish and Aryan Chess Alex Epstein
Writer Alex Epstein’s enigmatic short fiction has been hailed by Israeli critics as reminiscent of Borges and Kafka. Certainly, many of his stories can...
April, 2008
A Present from Dad Boaz Izraeli
The fatigue and failings of the protagonist in this month’s story reveal author Boaz Izraeli’s exacting eye for the details of contemporary Israeli society....
March, 2008
The Doll Yonah Bahur
A little more than a year ago, in January 2007, Zeek launched its initiative to publish Hebrew literature in translation. That same month I...
February, 2008
Video
The Nuclear Physicist Gives his Son a Haircut Hanan Harchol
Hanan Harchol is an artist of many media: digital animation, classical guitar, painting... yet he somehow can't seem to escape his father, who appears...
January, 2006
<2004-2005
Culture & Art Books Fiction, Essay, & Memoir Film, Theater & Media Jay's Head Music Politics Poetry & Dramatic Writing Photography Spirit
The Old/New Jewish Culture:
Queerness, Yiddish, and ReJEWvenation
Mordecai Drache
Elinor Carucci: Diary of a Dancer
Eliot Markell
We Will Destroy the Museums
Dan Friedman
Tribal Lessons
Michael Shurkin
Sha'arei Tzedek
Dan Friedman
James Lee Byars and the Number Ten
Abi Cohen
Hipster Antisemitism
Jennifer Blowdryer & Alvin Orloff
Art at War
Bara Sapir
Retrato de Familia
Bara Sapir
How Jewish is Modigliani?
Esther Nussbaum
Harvard Death Fugue:
Strasbourg Cathedral
Michael Shurkin
Beyond Belief
Joshua Furst
Out of the Depths
Lorna Knowles Blake
The Goats of War
Jennifer Blowdryer
Sephardic Culture: The Real Hidden Legacy
David Shasha and Jordan Elgrably
David: The Original Drama King
Dan Friedman
Much Ado on 2nd Avenue
Leah Koenig
Patrolling the Boundaries of Truth
Joel Stanley
Witnessing Marshall Meyer
Josh Feigelson
Heart of Pinkness
Michael Kuratin
What, me Tremble?
Jonathan Vatner
God's Unchanging Hand
Daniel Cohen
Whatever It Takes
Aaron Hamburger
Abba Kovner: The Warrior in Old Age
James Russell
Three Jewish Books on Sadness
Jay Michaelson
The Other Jews
Hila Ratzabi
This Land was Your Land
James Russell
Singing God's Praises: Psalms and Authenticity
Josh Feigelson
T Cooper: No Fences
Abi Cohen
Bush the Exception
Samuel Hayim Brody
The Truth about the Rosenbergs
Joel Stanley
Brodsky Begins
Part One
How I Ended Up at the Jerusalem Same-Sex Attraction Group
Phil S. Stein
An Account of the Saltscape
Joshua Cohen
Keri HaRishon
Bruce Lokeinsky
The Doctor
Sara Schulman
The Place of Anger
Jay Michaelson
Morituri de Salutant
Ari Belenkiy
Samaria for Rent
Margaret Strother-Shalev
Clive Firestone
Nicole Taylor
Friday Night Poetry
Sarah Cooper
Out of Bounds
Angela Himsel
Two Incidents at the Cafe Kamienica
Gordon Haber
Men who Laughed
Ari Belinkiy
I'll Say Goodbye and Let You Go
Abigail Pickus
Sitting on an aeroplane, while Grandma Dies
Nigel Savage
No Matter What, I Wish You Luck
Chanel Dubofsky
Hyatt Regency Dead Sea Resort
Rowena Silver
Dead Sea
Debra Bruno
Schneiderman
Eliezer Sobel
The Wheel World
Dan Friedman
Jews on Stage
Dan Friedman
The Merchant of Venice and the New Ruling Class
Karin Roffman
Straight Eye for the Consumer Guy
Dan Friedman
Tarnation: The Dream of Autobiography
Lauren Wilson
Steel and Glass
Dan Friedman
Mean to Girls
Dan Friedman
Persistence of Vision
Dan Friedman
Passion and Violence
Jay Michaelson
Hitler and God
Jay Michaelson
Fresh Baked Bread
Jay Michaelson
Fetishizing the Trigger
Jay Michaelson
Guilt and Groundedness
Jay Michaelson
Does Mysticism Prove the Existence of God?
Jay Michaelson
Star Wars, George Bush, Judaism, and the Penis
Jay Michaelson
When Dialogue Harms
Jay Michaelson
Discipline
Jay Michaelson
Shakey: An Essay on Anger
Jay Michaelson
I Still Believe that People are Good at Heart
Jay Michaelson
Am I Religious?
Jay Michaelson
How can you be gay and Jewish?
Jay Michaelson
Hasidism and Homoeroticism
Jay Michaelson
How I Finally Learned to Accept Christ in my Heart
Jay Michaelson
Life During Wartime
Jay Michaelson
You are God in Drag
Jay Michaelson
Thinking Despite Doubt, Feeling Despite Truth
Jay Michaelson
Ochila LaEil
Hayes Biggs
The So-Called Jewish Cultural Revolution
Leah Koenig
Down and Out in the Slipper Room
Joshua Axelrad
Sex and the Golem
Joshua Axelrad
One Ring Zero: As Smart as They Are
Paul Fischer
Wagner in Israel
Margaret Strother Shalev
Winter Light Promises
Jacob Staub
Lore
Adam Lavitt
Happy Jew Year
Haya Pomrenze
After Sepia Photographs
Hila Ratzabi
Tisha B'Av
David Harris Ebenbach
Golden Calf
Jacob Staub
Interview
Zachary Greenwald
The Hasidim
Hila Ratzabi
Three Nights
Jill Hammer
Jacob said to an Angel, Tell me your name
Abraham Mezrich
The Knowing
Jay Michaelson
Sufganiyot
Rachel Barenblat
A Jewish Masterpiece
David Zellnik
Money-Back Guarantee
Samantha Stiers
belly of the beast
Cullen Goldblatt
A Demonstration in Words
Hila Ratzabi
Hiding your Sins
Hal Sirowitz
Ghosts
Shaun Hanson
Playing Eve
Hila Ratzabi
Every City has a Soul
Jill Hammer
The Stable
Ira Stone
Then
Avi Levy
Faith
David Goldstein
God Had a Controlling Interest
Hal Sirowitz
Two Rituals
Joshua Bolton
The Second Coming of Yeshayahu Leibowitz
Avi Steinberg
A War in Postcards
Alon K. Raab
Postcards from Gaza
Images by Kitra Cahana
Israel on Campus: Creating Dialogue
Samuel Hayim Brody and Zach Gelman
Messianic Troublemakers
Jesse Cohn
The Pursuit of Justice
Emily Rosenberg
Let them Eat Myth
Douglas Rushkoff
To Ohio and Back
Avi Steinberg
Deconstructing Zell Miller
Jay Michaelson
Empowering Jewish Progressives
Dara Silverman talks with Leah Koenig
Where Left and Right Collide
Dan Friedman
The Spiritual Foundations of Bushism
Jay Michaelson
The Hamas Class of 1992
Michael Shurkin
The Virtue of Mediocrity
Michael Shurkin
A Song of Ascents
Sarah Lefton
Davening with Joe
Michael Shurkin
A Buju's Passage to India
Rachel Barenblat
How I Ended Up at the Jerusalem Same-Sex Attraction Group
Phil S. Stein
The Wooden Synagogues of Lithuania
Joyce Ellen Weinstein
Keri HaRishon
Bruce Lokeinsky
Golden Calf
Jacob Staub
Guilt Envy
Dan Friedman and David Zellnik
Masoretic Orgasm
Hayyim Obadyah
Giving Thanks to Elijah in Indian Manhattan
Jonathan Schorsch
Two Prayers for the Days of Awe
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
How can you be gay and Jewish?
Jay Michaelson
Jews, Goddesses, and the Zohar
Jill Hammer
Hasidism and Homoeroticism
Jay Michaelson
Couple
Ari Belenkiy
Becoming Jewish-ish
Jeff Leavell
How I Finally Learned to Accept Christ in my Heart
Jay Michaelson
Wrestling with Steve Greenberg
Jay Michaelson
Faith
David Goldstein
The Wrong Half
Margaret Mackenzie Schwartz
God Likes New Things
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Mica Scalin: Plague Cookies
Zeek Images: January, 2004-July, 2004
Zeek Images: July, 2002-December, 2002
Zeek Images: January, 2002-June, 2002
Culture and Art
December, 2005
August, 2005
Ashes and Snow and the Nomadic Museum
June, 2005
The new Museum of the American Indian, plus Esther Nussbaum on Yad Vashem
May, 2005
Walking through The Gates
March, 2005
February, 2005
Why it's cool to hate the Jews
January, 2005
Artists on 9/11 and the war on/of terror
October, 2004
A family of Guatemalan Jewish artists
September, 2004
A reappraisal of Modigliani la juif
August, 2004
The Exploitation of Bruno Schultz
Prof. James Russell
Historical revisionism and the new antisemitism in academia.
January, 2004
The soft borders between Jewish particularism and universalism
February, 2003
Books
Aaron Hamburger's Faith for Beginners
December, 2005
Veronica Golos' Poetic Midrash
November, 2005
On Men who Stare at Goats
October, 2005
Reviewing the new Schocken anthology
September, 2005
Robert Pinsky on the King
September, 2005
Mark Kurlansky's new boogaloo
August, 2005
On meditation and Judaism
July, 2005
A review of You are My Witness: The Living Words of Marshall Meyer
June, 2005
A masculinist encounters The Grrl Genius Guide to Sex (with other people)
June, 2005
A review of Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer
May, 2005
A review of Esther Kaplan's With God on their Side
March, 2005
How I learned to stop worrying and write a novel about Israel
February, 2005
The last words of Israel's soldier-poet
January, 2005
A bereaved mother, a rabbi, and a therapist look at dark emotions
December, 2004
Secularism, Kabbalah, and Radical Poetics
December, 2004
Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America"
November, 2004
What's lost and found in two new translations of the psalms
September, 2004
The Zeek interview
May, 2004
Two new books on Bush, taxes, and lies
March, 2004
Robert Meeropol's An Execution in the Family
January, 2004
Fiction, Essay and Memoir
Adam Mansbach
December, 2005
November, 2005
November, 2005
October, 2005
September, 2005
August, 2005
August, 2005
July, 2005
June, 2005
May, 2005
April, 2005
February, 2005
January, 2005
December, 2004
November, 2004
August, 2004
June, 2004
April, 2004
March, 2004
Film, Theater, TV & Media
On the disabled in film
July, 2005
What to make of the recent spate of Jewish theater productions?
April, 2005
February, 2005
Querying the queering of capitalism
December, 2004
November, 2004
August, 2004
June, 2004
April, 2004
March, 2004
Jay's Head
December, 2005
November, 2005
October, 2005
September, 2005
July, 2005
June, 2005
May, 2005
April, 2005
March, 2005
On the anthropology of contemplative practice
February, 2005
November, 2004
September, 2004
July, 2004
Making peace with Jesus
June, 2004
Freedom and the Ordinary
April, 2004
Notes from and after retreat
February, 2004
Between contemplation and affirmation
January, 2004
Music
October, 2005
June, 2005
A Review of Val Geffner, and alienation
November, 2004
On scoring films, golems, and shiksas
August, 2004
Brooklyn's latest hepster yids make good
July, 2004
Inside Israel's curious opera ban
May, 2004
Poetry and Dramatic Writing
December, 2005
November, 2005
October, 2005
September, 2005
August, 2005
July, 2005
May, 2005
April, 2005
March, 2005
February, 2005
January, 2005
December, 2004
December, 2004
November, 2004
October, 2004
October, 2004
September, 2004
August, 2004
June, 2004
May, 2004
May, 2004
April, 2004
April, 2004
March, 2004
January, 2004
Politics
An unlikely hero for an unlikely time
November, 2005
Israel and Palestine, as seen through their postcards
September, 2005
Before the fall
August, 2005
A conversation with two campus activists
July, 2005
On Jewish anarchists
April, 2005
The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs: An appreciation
March, 2005
Should liberals compromise their ideals in order to remain relevant?
January, 2005
A report from the campaign's front lines: home
January, 2005
Reality and rhetoric in an election year
October, 2004
An interview with the Jews for Racial & Economic Justice Director
October, 2004
A debate between the author of "A Jewish Critique of Bushism" and the head of "L.A. for Bush"
October, 2004
The deep structure of the American Right's appeal
August, 2004
Catching up with some famous refugees
May, 2004
Reading Toqueville in an Election Year
April, 2004
The News from San Francisco
March, 2004
To fear a Jewish president
February, 2004
Spirit
December, 2005
November, 2005
October, 2005
October, 2005
July, 2005
May, 2005
April, 2005
March, 2005
September, 2004
September, 2004
July, 2004
July, 2004
July, 2004
June, 2004
Making peace with Jesus
June, 2004
May, 2004
April, 2004
March, 2004
trans. by Jonathan Boyarin
February, 2004
Original Art and Photography
Lag B'Omer: Sound and Vision
Andy Alpern and Shir Yaakov Feinstein-Feit
2003
Click here for 2003 archive.