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TBR: Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

OK, so a book titled Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946 may seem an unlikely contender for a beach reading list. But after reading Adam Kirsch’s review on Tablet yesterday, I went right to Amazon.com and ordered it. And it is coming with me to the beach in August (that is, if I don’t somehow tear through it before then).

It’s not just Kirsch’s review, of course, that has drawn me to the book. It’s the connection with my own family history, which I’ve referenced on this blog and elsewhere. It’s the fact that my own paternal grandparents were in “flight from the Reich,” refugee Jews in the United States from the late 1930s on.

Do read the review. And then, if you are so inclined, read the book. And tell me what you think.

Council of American Jewish Museums Web Site

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

From the Foundation for Jewish Culture e-newsletter:

CAJM Launches New Website

We are excited to direct your attention to the beautiful and rich website recently launched by our colleagues at the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM): www.cajm.net. The FJC is proud to have helped create this consortium of cultural institutions more than three decades ago. In addition to being the primary place for individuals in the Jewish museum field to learn and share, the website is a wonderful resource for interested travelers and Jewish culture enthusiasts and features a wide array of institutions, exhibitions, programs, and news.

Worth a visit!

Jewish Humor, via New York Magazine

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Larry David’s striking resemblance to my dad is not the only reason I’m so happy to see this week’s New York magazine cover story. I didn’t know that Woody Allen had written and directed a new movie–starring David. Now I know.

And how about this for a good Web site idea: OldJewsTellingJokes.com. Just what I need–another Web distraction!

Really enjoyed this material–even if it does make me feel old. Somehow, I don’t see myself quite as free of the “baggage” NYM seems to think my generation of American Jews has successfully shorn. Something to think about.

Happy Birthday to Goodbye, Columbus

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Philip Roth didn’t have to invent a Macondo or a Yoknapatawpha County. From the very start of his career, he situated significant portions of his fiction in a place you can find pretty easily on a map: Essex County, New Jersey.

As someone who spent half her childhood (ages 9-18) growing up in Essex County, I particularly appreciated yesterday’s Paper Cuts post on Roth, a most famous literary “Jersey Boy.” (Did you know that that his first book of stories, Goodbye Columbus, was published 50 years ago this week? Happy Birthday to Roth’s debut book.)

"Nazi Refugees’ Son Explores Complex Feelings"

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

The headline–“Nazi Refugees’ Son Explores Complex Feelings”–caught my attention immediately. Because, you see, my father is the only son of Nazi refugees, and I’ve always suspected he has some rather complex feelings about that fact.

But the story beneath the headline, which appeared in The New York Times this week, was not about my father. Rather, it was about children of Jewish refugees from Central Europe who grew up in Kew Gardens, Queens, in the 1940s and 1950s (my dad grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn). And it was about “Last Stop Kew Gardens,” a semiautobiographical documentary about this cohort. A film I will certainly be looking for.