by Matthew Friedman | Sep 24, 2023 | Essays, Jewish Life
True atonement is difficult because we are not always aware of our sins against others, and from whom to ask forgiveness. The Tefilah Zaka meditation goes, “I know that there is no one so righteous that they have not wronged another,” and that is my point of departure...
by Matthew Friedman | Jun 16, 2023 | Commentary, Essays
My first impression of the United States was… not great. I remember watching scraps of paper packaging blow unobstructed down the street in the late-summer breeze, corner trash bins overflowing twice their volume, crumbling concrete, cracked bricks, and peeling paint....
by Matthew Friedman | Mar 8, 2023 | Essays
A crowd of 4,000 gathered in the chilly, late-spring rain to dedicate a memorial to America’s war dead in Newark’s Military Park. It was 1926, only seven-and-a-half years since the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War. Veterans stood on the dais...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 27, 2023 | Arts, Essays
At the end Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, Kaiser Uberall accepts his fate: he will be sacrificed to restore the balance of life and death that his own arrogance and brutality so tragically upset. It is one of the most powerful moments in 20th century...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 19, 2023 | Commentary, Essays
There is a note of tragic foreboding in the twelfth chapter of the first Book of Kings. This is where “Israel rebelled against the house of David” and the Kingdom of Israel, united under Saul, David, and Solomon, is split asunder as Jeroboam, a head man of the tribe...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 11, 2023 | Arts, Essays
I remember the night that my father came home from work with a copy of the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields’ recording of Bach’s The Art of Fugue. It was a double-LP boxed-set (recorded music came on black vinyl discs in those days) with extensive...
