“I couldn’t walk easily, much less drive, but I knew I needed to be in Pittsburgh the moment I saw a CNN news alert that a shooting had taken place in a synagogue there.”
That’s the first line in Ron Kampeas’s must-read “Covering the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting and Its Aftermath Tested Me as a Jewish Journalist” (JTA).
“The truth is that the news media do have a problem in much of their reporting on Israel and Diaspora Jewry. It might help further their understanding if it weren’t called an ‘antisemitism problem’ — a loaded term that does more to insult than educate — and were described instead as an ignorance problem.
This essay is intended to address that ignorance.”
Source: Yaacov Katz, “Mainstream Media: Not Antisemitic but Blind to Jewish Concerns” (Sapir)
“With all of these dark signs, though, it is important to remember that at the core of Judaism, and Jewish history, there is always hope for a brighter future.”
Source: Gary Rosenblatt, “The Israel We Know Has Fallen”
This week, something a tad different.
I know it’s late notice, but I didn’t know about this much earlier, myself.
I’m going to be a featured reader this evening for the Head for the Hills poetry series. The event begins at 6pm Pacific time (9pm for me here in New York).
(more…)As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I shared with you the result of a little experiment: ChatGPT’s response when prompted to design a syllabus for a course titled “Contemporary Jewish Short Stories,” which is, in fact, the title of a course that I am scheduled to begin teaching at the end of August.
Since comments on that post continue to come in (some of them on the post’s page, some on Twitter, and some privately), I thought that there might be interest in the results of a second experiment—when I asked ChatGPT for a list of recommended readings for a course on contemporary Jewish short stories. (Readings, alas, were not included on ChatGPT’s “original” syllabus.)
Below you’ll find what ChatGPT came up with.
(more…)