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Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“Israelis can listen to the views of dissenters. They are used to it. But they also want to trust that their dissenters are still a part of the family.”
Shmuel Rosner, “Who Killed the Israeli Left?” (The New York Times)

“The presumption that Jews must choose between liberalism and Zionism—and always had to—turns each into a kind of historical cartoon. Zionism is not just tribal primacy, and liberalism is not just an empathy for history’s dispossessed.”
Bernard Avishai, “Is Liberal Zionism Impossible?” (The New Yorker)

“Something feels different now.”
Marjorie Ingall, “Anxiously Sending Little Jews to School” (Tablet) (more…)

Wednesday’s WiP: Book Reviewing on the Brain (Again)

by Erika Dreifus on
3

18166873Book reviews were something of a big topic among the Twitterati this past week. I’m thinking mainly of the reaction to a review published (and subsequently withdrawn) by The Economist. But I saw some lively, if not especially incisive, commentary about another review, of a novel, in another well-known publication (summary: some people seemed to think the reviewer was too harsh).

But the book review that most caught my attention over the last week was one included in The New Yorker‘s “Briefly Noted” section. I’ll give you a moment to click over and read it (it’s the second one, on Frederick Brown’s The Embrace of Unreason).

You’ll see why I’m so dissatisfied by the anonymous New Yorker reviewer’s take when you read my own review of the same book, commissioned for a publication-that-shall-not-be-named, but eventually “killed.” I’ve been told that the review’s “death” resulted not from any specific problem with the piece; in fact, what you’re seeing here is the “final” version that incorporates revisions requested and approved by my editor.

Without further ado–my review: (more…)

Sunday Sentence

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

“(To this day, his accent—a bewildering mix of Colonial English, Eton and Jackie Gleason—reflects this unusual provenance.)”

Source: Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Everything Is Illuminated,”* The New York Times Magazine (*title appears to differ in print and electronic versions)

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“But forgive us if we experience a special kind of grief for the Jewish kid from Miami, who played rugby and video games and tweeted about American basketball and risked his life to tell an important story.”
“Steven Sotloff Was Jewish,” editorial in The Forward

“We only wish your response and your voice against this crime and the crime Hamas has committed against their own people.”
“Letter by Parents of Daniel Tregerman to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.”

“Vigilance means speaking out whenever protests devolve into the classic rhetoric and symbolism of Jew hatred: swastikas, blood libels, conspiracy theories. We must reject depictions of Israel as a spearhead of Western colonialism — a clash between ‘European’ and ‘brown’ people — and explain how that narrative depends on a stereotypical and caricatured image of the ‘Jew’ that ignores the diverse reality of Israel (which includes, not coincidentally, brown and black people who were either thrown out of or made miserable in a wide range of non-European, ‘post-colonial’ countries). And we need to keep reminding people that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is not anti-Semitic because it seeks justice for the Palestinians, but because it sees no place for the Jewish state or the Jews who live there.”
“Fight Anti-Semitism, Embrace Zionism,” by Andrew Silow-Carroll (New Jersey Jewish News) (more…)

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

“Anyone still wondering whether Salaita ought to have a teaching job should play the parlor game of reading his tweets and replacing references to Jews and Israelis with blacks, gays, or women. Should an American institution of higher learning employ someone who tweeted, say, that black Americans were ‘transforming “racism” from something horrible into something honorable since 1964’?”
Liel Leibovitz, “Tweets Cost Professor Steven Salaita His Tenure, and That’s a Good Thing” (Tablet)

“Prof. Salaita is entitled to his political views. However academic freedom is not a license for all possible speech: it does not protect hate speech or harassment, it does not legitimate the dehumanization of political opponents, and it certainly does not excuse incitements to violence. Institutions of higher education have a vested interest in protecting an atmosphere of reasoned discussion. Incendiary speech destroys that discussion.”
Russell Berman, “Academic Freedom and Academic Standards” (Hoover Institution) 

“Liberal Zionists need to stop whining about how they feel about Israel, and, assuming they really care, work to assist the indigenous institutions fighting for their values. Otherwise, they’re not Zionists — they’re quitters.”
Andrew Silow-Carroll, “The Liberal Zionist Surrender,” New Jersey Jewish News

“What drove me away was the paper’s incessant denigration of Israel, a torrent of articles, photographs, and op-ed columns that consistently present the Jewish State in the worst possible light.”
Rabbi Richard Block, “Why I’m Unsubscribing to the New York Times,” Tablet (more…)