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Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“Bernie Sanders’ campaign has illuminated the new rules that govern Jewish participation on the progressive left. One cannot simply be a Jew: One must be a Jew who loudly and proudly declaims his distance from Israel and the American Jewish ‘establishment’ at every possible opportunity. And unlike every other member of the progressive coalition, Judaism and Jewish peoplehood must only be expressed through a universalist vision of ‘social justice’ that emphatically proclaims that Jewish causes and rights are no more (or usually less) worthy than those of Black Lives Matter, the Palestinians, La Raza, etc., and which sees this self-abnegation as the price of entry—for Jews alone.”

Source: Jamie Kirchick, “Bernie Sanders’ Jewish Problem, And Ours” (Tablet)

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
2

“TAPPER: Senator Sanders told me that Israel’s response in Gaza was disproportionate — that was his word — leading to an unnecessary loss of innocent life.

And you told ‘The Atlantic’ in 2014 that — quote — ‘Israel did what it had to do to respond to the attacks.’

What do you make of Senator Sanders’ take on it, that it was disproportionate?

H. CLINTON: Well, he will have to speak for himself, but…

TAPPER: You don’t agree, though?

H. CLINTON: Well, I agree with what I said, which is, when you are being attacked with rockets raining down on your people, and your soldiers are under attack, you have to respond.

And I think that what I learned when I negotiated the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in 2012 is that Hamas provokes Israel. They often pretend to have people in civilian garb acting as though they are civilians who are Hamas fighters. And it’s a very difficult undertaking for Israel to target those who are targeting them.

And I think Israel has had to defend itself. It has a right to defend itself. It did not go seeking this. This was, you know, promoted by Hamas. And I support Israel’s right of self-defense.”

Source: “State of the Union,” 10 April 2016

#ImWithHer

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“With the writers of Orringer’s generation who choose the Holocaust as a subject, we’re watching an inevitable transition from a literature that can remember to a literature that can only imagine. Does the winking magic realism of Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Everything is Illuminated’ call more attention to the author than to his subject? Does the Hollywood-style feel-goodery of David Benioff’s ‘City of Thieves’ put too smooth a polish on mass suffering and death?

Orringer avoids these pitfalls and many more by making brilliant use of a deliberately old-fashioned realism to define individual fates engulfed by history’s deadly onrush. She maintains a fine balance between the novel’s intimate moments — whose emotional acuity will be familiar to admirers of her 2003 story collection, ‘How to Breathe Underwater’ — and its panoramic set-pieces. Even those monumental scenes manage to display a tactful humility: This is a story, they keep reminding us, and it’s not bringing anybody back. With its moving acknowledgment of the gap between what’s been lost and what can be imagined, this remarkably accomplished first novel is itself, in the continuing stream of Holocaust literature, an invisible bridge.

Source: Donna Rifkind (The Washington Post)

NB: This is not a new find–but I returned to it this week as I prepared for a seminar (happening later this morning) in which we’ll be discussing Orringer’s novel. And the words are all the more powerful this morning, as I consider remarks offered last night at a most special event at the CUNY Graduate Center, and as I discover news of the death today, in Hungary, of author Imre Kertesz.