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Tomorrow Belongs to Them
There’s a scene about halfway through the 1972 film musical Cabaret that never fails to give me chills. The film’s hero Brian Roberts (Michael York) and his lover Max von Heune (Helmut Griem) are enjoying a glass of lager at a biergarten in the German countryside in...
Tomorrow Belongs to Them
There’s a scene about halfway through the 1972 film musical Cabaret that never fails to give me...
Kristallnacht is Coming: A Herald of the Storm
It stopped me dead in my tracks as I was walking down Newark Ave. in Jersey City one morning in...
The Shadow of the Gun: Felix Salten’s Dark Warning in a New Translation of Bambi
The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest Felix Salten, translated by Jack Zipes, with...
I Will Remember: The Music of the Holocaust
At the end Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis, Kaiser Uberall accepts his fate: he will be...
Review of Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora in Modernism/Modernity
This Content Can’t Be Shared in Canada
I had no idea when I woke up this morning that I was going to spend most of my day trying to...
“Gabba Gabba One of Us:” The Perils of Misplaced Ethnic Pride
I laughed so hard that I passed beer through my nose. The occasion was the first episode of...
My Hammer and Sickle
I have not worn my hammer-and-sickle T-shirt in public for a long time. In fairness, I rarely wear...
Hubris and the Tragedy of Israeli Democracy
The images of Israelis protesting in the streets of Tel Aviv are arresting. They have continued...
Mourning for Israel, Weeping for Gaza
I have been watching the events in the State of Israel with horror. Hundreds, perhaps a thousand...
Tefilah Zaka: A Meditation on Sin and Atonement
True atonement is difficult because we are not always aware of our sins against others, and from...
America is the Greatest Country in the World!
My first impression of the United States was… not great. I remember watching scraps of paper...
A White Nationalist Sword in the Heart of American History
A crowd of 4,000 gathered in the chilly, late-spring rain to dedicate a memorial to America’s war...
We Are Not Safe: Standing Up to the Day of Hate
There was a time when I would have just brushed off the news that a neo-Nazi group would be...
I Will Remember: The Music of the Holocaust
At the end Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis, Kaiser Uberall accepts his fate: he will be...
The Sundering of Israel: How Extremist Zionism Threatens Jewish Life
There is a note of tragic foreboding in the twelfth chapter of the first Book of Kings. This is...
Prelude and Fugue: Bach’s Music in the Vaults of Heaven
I remember the night that my father came home from work with a copy of the Academy of Saint Martin...
“Jew-ish:” George Santos and the Rhetoric of Genocide
Amnesia is perhaps the only blessing of the rapid-fire news cycle. These are, after all, dark and...
Buddha in the Garden: Remembering Bob Hogg
Short, fragmented lines, like shards of broken glass in the sun, skipping from one facet to the...
Atoning for the Sins of History
Malachy Salter was the great mythical ancestor of my mother’s family. We held him up as a kind of...
Remembering the Queen of Canada
I recall a college history professor once saying that Richard Coeur de Lion is remembered as one...
Shooting the Moon
Artemis 1 sits waiting on the pad at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B, shackled to earth by...
John Fetterman is a Slob, and That Matters
John Fetterman is a slob. The Democratic Senate candidate for Pennsylvania has been turning up at...
Graven Images and Grim Realities
“Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles,” Gustave Flaubert wrote in Madame Bovary, “la dorure en reste...
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