One Week After Memorial Day: Remembering Jewish Military Chaplains

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

As I mentioned last week, on Memorial Day, I attended a very moving ceremony at a local synagogue. And among the participants were several Jewish military chaplains.

I have to admit that this was hard for me. The last time I’d been in a temple to honor a Jewish military chaplain, I was attending the funeral of my family’s beloved Rabbi Barry H. Greene. Military chaplaincy was among Rabbi Greene’s many causes. He was himself a proud military chaplain; his coffin (it still feels terrible to write those two words) was flag-draped, and the director of the Jewish Chaplains Council spoke at the funeral.

It was in Rabbi Greene’s memory that I began contributing to the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) Jewish Chaplains Council. Last Chanukah, instead of buying gifts for all of my adult family members (the kids still got their packages to tear open), I wrote a check to support the Council’s Torahs for the Troops project, which, happily, is now very much under way, with a first Torah recently completed and brought to the Persian Gulf.

Now there’s another project I want to support. When I returned home from the Memorial Day ceremony, I picked up the summer edition of Reform Judaism magazine. A letter to the editor described an effort to raise funds for a memorial to Jewish chaplains in Arlington Cemetery. That letter is not available online, but I’ve found some articles that describe it further.

For instance, the Jewish Journal reported earlier this spring:

“Of the 311 Jewish chaplains who served during World War II, eight rabbis died. Two rabbis lost their lives in the Vietnam War. No Jewish chaplains are known to have died while serving during the World War I or the Korean War, although research is still being done to confirm that.

Sol Moglen, an activist in New York who is leading the effort….has already raised $17,000 of the $30,000 needed to build the memorial, a granite slab that will be erected on Chaplains Hill at Arlington, where memorials for Protestant and Catholic clergy already stand.”

I’m going to contact the JWB and contribute to this very worthy project. Perhaps you will, too?

On Literary Boycotting

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

And “for the little it’s worth,” I hereby boycott any work by Iain Banks.

Sometimes, I just can’t fathom how supposedly smart people (writers and “intellectuals”) can speak and behave with a complete and utter lack of critical abilities and insight. (Don’t even get me started on Henning Mankell.)

(Thanks to The Literary Saloon for the above links.)

But again, unlike certain others, I won’t be cowed by the double-standards and hypocrisies that too often characterize the words of literary loudmouths. And frankly, I do not have the time or the stamina to try to persuade these people of the error of their ways. So after making my position known, I simply stop engaging them, leaving them/their organizations altogether and going on to other (hopefully, more productive) ways to spend my time (and, not incidentally in at least one case, membership dues).

Friday Find: YOUR Reading Recommendations

by Erika Dreifus on
4

As part of our Short Story Month Collection Giveaway Project, many of you were kind enough to share, in the main giveaway post’s comments, the titles of collections you’ve loved and/or are looking forward to reading. Now, following the sage example of the folks at the Fiction Writers Review site, I’ve decided to compile those recommendations so that we can all appreciate them one more time, in one lovely list. I hope I haven’t missed anyone or make any mistakes (please correct me if I have).

Thanks again. You practicing writers are awesome! What a resource this list is (especially for anyone seeking summer reading suggestions).

Kathi Appelt, Kissing Tennessee
Poe Ballantine, Things I Like About America (Erika’s note: I’m not entirely certain this is a book of fiction, but I’ve enjoyed Ballantine’s work in The Sun, so, we’ll keep it!)
Kevin Barry, There Are Little Kingdoms
Charles Baxter, Through the Safety Net
Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions
T.C. Boyle, Wild Child and Other Stories
Kevin Brockmeier, Things That Fall from the Sky
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
Julio Cortazar, All Fires the Fire
Phillip F. Deaver, Silent Retreats
Charles D’Ambrosio, The Point
Edwidge Danticat, Krik? Krak!
Anthony Doerr, The Shell Collector
Howard Goldowsky (ed.), Masters of Technique: The Mongoose Anthology of Chess Fiction
Richard Ford, A Multitude of Sins
Richard Ford, Rock Springs
Ben Fountain, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara
Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly: Stories
Lisa Glatt, The Apple’s Bruise
Allegra Goodman, The Family Markowitz
R.W. Gray, Crisp
Amy Hempel, Collected Stories
Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth
Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
Lydia Millet, Love in Infant Monkeys
Alice Munro, (“Anything”)
Joyce Carol Oates, Faithless: Tales of Transgression
Flannery O’Connor, Everything That Rises Must Converge
Mary Otis, Yes, Yes, Cherries!
ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Lydia Peelle, Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing
Benjamin Percy, Refresh, Refresh
Laura Pritchett, Hell’s Bottom, Colorado
Annie Proulx, Fine Just the Way It Is
Eric Puchner, Music Through the Floor
J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
George Saunders, Pastoralia
Lore Segal, Shakespeare’s Kitchen
Sam Shepard, Day Out of Days
Lara Vapnyar, Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love
Patricia Volk, All It Takes
Hannah Tinti, Animal Crackers
Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Eudora Welty, The Golden Apples

Thursday’s Pre-Publication Post: Torn Between Two Covers

by Erika Dreifus on
4

This week’s major pre-publication development is this: Over the Memorial Day holiday, I e-mailed the wonderful cover designer who has been drafting designs for the Quiet Americans cover, and I told him that I’d chosen a design to go with.

In the end, I’d narrowed the options to two designs. I can’t show them to you (truly, I can’t–I don’t have them in a format I can upload to the blog without some serious interventions). But I can tell you that they present two very different images. Opposite images, in fact. So I was, indeed, “torn between two covers.”

It’s a real relief to have put an end to the indecision. (The cover designer congratulated me on this victory!) Now we just have some tweaking to do (I’ve asked for some additional options for the byline font, for instance). Then, at least, the front cover will be done. Not all the info is yet available to complete the spine and back.

Speaking of covers…Last Light Studio, my book’s publisher, has recently launched a blog. And about two weeks ago, that blog featured a post about the cover design process behind the company’s first release: Armand Inezian’s Bringing Ararat (which is now available!). Check it out!