by Matthew Friedman | Sep 25, 2022 | Commentary, Essays
Malachy Salter was the great mythical ancestor of my mother’s family. We held him up as a kind of buccaneering merchant hero who operated two privateers under Letters of Marque from King George II and King George III, first out of Boston and then, as was the case of...
by Matthew Friedman | Jul 31, 2022 | Essays
“Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles,” Gustave Flaubert wrote in Madame Bovary, “la dorure en reste aux mains.” We must not touch our idols, lest the gilt comes off on our hands. Flaubert’s warning has been echoing in my mind as I have repeatedly scrolled past Annie...
by Matthew Friedman | May 27, 2022 | Essays
I am not an optimist by inclination. I was raised Jewish in the 1960s and 1970s, and learned about the full enormity of the Shoah from people who experienced it. There were Nella Lacks, and Mr. Preisler at summer camp, who had the numbers on their arms; so did Mr....
by Matthew Friedman | May 4, 2022 | Essays, Politics
I can hear my mother’s voice: “You shouldn’t say things like that.” Nancy Salter, who died 16 years ago, was a brilliant writer and editor, a social worker, and an activist committed to social justice and the project of making the world a better place. She was also a...
by Matthew Friedman | Apr 15, 2022 | Essays, Features
Beth Cole had not yet decided whether or not she would make a brisket for the Passover Seder this week. “I was going to bring the brisket, but I think I’m going to do a roast chicken, because I have to cook for, like, ten people,” she says. Besides, it isn’t her...
by Matthew Friedman | Dec 6, 2021 | Essays
I wept when my mother died in the winter of 2006, and when my father died in the spring of 2012. And I cried when Nelson Mandela died eight years ago, on 5 December 2013. I felt as if I had lost a close friend, a mentor, a member of my own family. I was puzzled by the...
