It was after thirty years of thinking of myself a semi-scholarly critic of Jewish American comic art, and fifty-plus years since I discovered Mad Comics to be the soul of my childish literary pleasures, that I came across the work and world of Sammy Harkham. There's a good reason for this late discovery: he is so young! Not yet pushing thirty, Harkham already has launched Kramer's Ergot, a premier comics anthology.

The Cover of Sammy's book "Crickets." Kramer's Ergot is "only" an annual, but an extravagant annual with no compromises of any kind to the history of comic art or any other art, nor to politics, nor (and this may be an important point for a former yeshiva bokher still interested in the Torah) to anyone's interpretation of Jewishness. His drawing fills a small minority of the pages because, obviously, he wants to offer as much variety as he can.

 He is thus building comic art in his own fashion. Looking back-though not so far back as the original Mad--I see only Arcade (1975-77), edited by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, and Raw (1980-91), edited by Spiegelman with Francois Mouly, as occupying such a high creative space. This is not to demean Zap, Weirdo (mostly Robert Crumb's Nineties mag), Comix Book, Blab or another zine that Harkham edits occasionally, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase. Or the Best American Comics series with two annual numbers so far, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore. Each has an honorable and proudly weird place of its own.

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Another quick one, as requested by David Choe. The picture of the day. Anything I say will be extraneous. Except: this makes me feel warm inside.

I’m sorry. I really am. I had an entirely different column outlined for this week, all about interpreting the book and recent film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited through the lens of the twentieth century American Jewish experience (the striving, the trying to fit in with people who don’t really see you as an equal, the getting by on sheer talent, the masochistic self-loathing); a piece of literary criticism that would have surely made the genteelly anti-Semitic Evelyn Waugh (who for years was desperately, unrequitedly in love with the notorious Diana Mitford Mosley, Britain’s most glamorous Nazi) turn in his grave. It was going to have a beginning, middle and end; it would have had a coherent thesis and concluding statement.

But that was before the Olympics melted my analytic mind, turning it into a messy, manic carnival of nationalistic synapses. And now, I’m too excited to write (or even think) about anything else.

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During the 1980s, Israeli filmmakers were preoccupied with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the 1990s, they explored the dynamic between Israel's urban centers and the country's periphery. The past decade has witnessed a rise in films that seek to portray the experience of communities previously considered marginal to Israeli cinema. Avi Nesher's latest drama, The Secrets (Israel/France, 2007), joins a host of recent Israeli films, both feature-length and documentary, which explore Israel's ultra-orthodox community.

Ultra-orthodox Jews were mostly absent from Israeli filmmaking until the 1990s. This is no surprise, because Israeli cinema has historically reflected the identity of the Israeli establishment, promoting secularism and criticizing religion as a sign of ethno-nationalism rather than as a cultural facet of everyday life. From the late 1990s, however, the religious experience moved to the center of stage of Israeli cinema.

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(I DID NOT KNOW, MY LOVER)
(IKH HOB NIT GEVUST, MAYN LIBER)

I did not know, my lover,
That with slow, longing fingers
I etch you into my poems.

Now they have the heavy gleam
Of your eyes, the sharp line
Of your mouth, of your
Stubborn hand.

The wonder,
When my own word
Touches me with your hand.

When near, oh near you grow
From a severe, bright chord.

The wonder...

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The schlemiel--that bumbling, anxious, and cosmically inept antihero of much American Jewish literature--rarely finds his place in Israeli writing. Instead, modern Hebrew literature celebrates the mythic sabra, the altruistic, brave, and resourceful native-born Israeli. This is especially true in fiction set against the backdrop of Israel’s many wars. So it is significant that Shimon Riklin’s novel, set in the “wild north” during the first Lebanon War, features a schlemiel protagonist: Yakov Zilberstein is the IDF’s perfect clerking machine. Riklin’s satiric take on military ethos and army bureaucracy follows in the tradition of Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, making his work easily accessible to American readers. --Adam Rovner, translations editor

1.

“Motherfucker!!!”

Yakov jumped, but the driver’s attention was elsewhere. He spat out a curse and slammed on the gas pedal of the orange Fiesta, which sputtered and struggled up the road to Jerusalem. The wipers were barely able to push aside the rain, and the windshield kept fogging up. The driver pounded the wheel, hoping the blows would get the car moving. “I hope you’re not in a rush,” he muttered.

“I . . . I actually . . .” Yakov began, but immediately conceded for fear of burdening the considerate driver who had picked him up. “No, no,” he said, “It’s ok, I’m in no rush at all,” and turned to look out the window again. After some moaning and groaning the rust-orange hunk of tin succeeded in getting to the straightaway that came after Sho’evah, and then began hurtling down the hill. Yakov looked into the gorge full of milky-white clouds that spilled out onto the road, and it seemed to him as if any moment now the clouds would carry the car upward, sailing of its own free will, no earth under its wheels, until they, Yakov and the anxious driver whose grin now spread from ear to ear, would hover over Ein-Hemed, take off over the Castel, and a few moments later, land in Jerusalem.

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Kevin Powell: say what now? This week’s “D’oh!” moment comes courtesy of former Real World star and straight- outta-Brooklyn’s-10^th-Congressional-District US House of Representatives hopeful, Kevin Powell. The New York Post reports that while at a meet and greet dinner in Williamsburg, Powell promised a room full of Orthodox Jews that, if elected, he would “bring home the bacon.” Smooth.

We're guessing that of all the things Powell could have promised to bring home to those forty representatives from the Satmar community in attendance, "the bacon" was probably the last thing on their wish list. When the story’s original reporters, The Brooklyn Paper, asked Powell if he understood the implications of his metaphor in light of this particular audience, he replied, “I am definitely aware of their Kosher diet. It was an inside joke, as I’ve become very comfortable with this community.” The Brooklyn Paper did not specify whether or not Powell’s statement was followed up by his tugging at his collar, wiping his brow, and coughing loudly.

Clap if You Believe: Everytime a bacon joke gets made in front of the Hassidic, a bacon angel gets its wingsSo, because Jewcy cannot just let a tremendous opportunity like this pass us by, we offer a few kosher-friendly alternatives for Powell to consider next time:

• I promise to bring home the brisket.
• I promise to bring home the kreplach.
• I promise to bring home the bagels. (As long as there are no shmear campaigns.)

On the other hand, here's our “Is this thing on?” list for Powell to avoid at all costs:

• Now, I know what you’re thinking: this guy looks about as out of place in this room as a doughnut on Passover!
• Geez, I feel as nervous as a Bar Mitzvah boy before his haftarah up here!
• Any budget cuts I make will be absolutely necessary. All the mohels in the house know what I’m talking about!

Can you think of any more? Leave your suggestions in the comments section.

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or email.

Title: One Minute to Midnight, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History Author: Michael Dobbs, Theodore Sorenson Description: Michael Dobbs’ riveting account of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis allows us to understand those heart-stopping days from the point of view of the key decision-makers, most importantly President John Kennedy and Chairman Nikita Khrushchev. Dobbs describes more vividly than ever before, and with new historical documentation, the deadly brew of miscalculation, limited information, mistakes, and false assumptions which almost trigged nuclear annihilation. As Kennedy famously remarked at one point when a U.S. spy plane went off course, potentially triggering a Soviet attack at an especially perilous moment, “There’s always some son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t get the message.” Theodore Sorenson’s wonderful memoirs add greatly to our feel for President Kennedy as an individual and world leader, and also shine with Sorenson’s own Olympian talents, not only as the greatest speechwriter of the modern Presidency but as a great and humane policy advisor and analyst. Read in conjunction with Dobb’s book, Sorenson’s memoirs help us to understand more deeply why the world survived the missile crisis. Kennedy’s humanity, judgment, and good sense trumped the misguided and hothead advice of the generals. No doubt, Khrushchev’s similar abhorrence of war was also pivotal. One of Kennedy’s greatest strengths was his ability to intuit Khrushchev’s shared will to find a peaceful outcome. These harrowing events are not simply a matter of history. They speak to us across two generations. How shall we treat our adversaries? Shall we assume the worst and perhaps thereby accidently trigger it? Can peace be found in the midst of bluster and missteps? I believe that the Cuban Missile Crisis and the successful negotiation the following year of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty together confirm Kennedy’s greatest insight: that our adversaries are, in the end, human beings with common interests and a similar will to survive. It is on those common interests that peace can be built. John Kennedy and Theodore Sorenson put it this way, in the most important Presidential speech of modern history: John Kennedy’s “Peace Speech” at the American University Commencement in June 1963. So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we can not now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. Recommended By: Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin, 2008). He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty. He has been named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine.

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or tips. For more New Jew Canon recommendations, visit Jewcy's New Jew Canon Listmania.

More: New Jew Canon

Walls and Domes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On this flight to Pittsburgh
the man next to me reads
the latest thriller with
lips aflutter.

He reads with Talmudic fervency
divining the permanent in black and white.

I look half-eyed at the city splayed gray below me-
the air clear,
spires of scrapers
just below the wings.

This morning, making my son's bed
his room came alive
with signs of his being-
the pillow shaped to the curve of his head-
and the air
that carried the scent of him
as sheet and blanket crested,
passed through me
true as God's unutterable name.

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David Berman: likes to read David Berman is the front man and only constant member in the (formerly) ever-changing lineup of Silver Jews. On albums, he is loose-lipped and brazen, throwing clichés to the wind and spouting lyrics that are brilliant, simple, and beautiful; Pitchfork Media, bastion of all that is hip, said of him “the things that flash through my mind…if I had discipline and talent, could perhaps be turned into words by David Berman.”

It’s a strange compliment, but, when dealing with Berman, one learns to wade through the sea of compliments…and the sea of weirdness. The New York Times called his debut collection of poetry, Actual Air, “one of the most highly acclaimed debuts for a poet in recent memory.” And his on-and-off sideman, Stephen Malkmus, is one of independent rock’s greatest heroes: once the singer/guitarist for the band Pavement, he’s now a highly-successful solo artist.

When the Times interviewed Berman in 2005, he made a passing reference to a new hobby: reading Torah. Now, he does it every day—partly for other reasons, but partly because the unexpected collusion that his once-arbitrary band name has brought.

This has been a busy year for the Berman and his cohorts. The band and their first Israeli national tour were the subjects of the documentary Silver Jew. And their just-released album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, is the venerable latest entry in a just-as-venerable catalogue. We recently caught up with Berman to discuss touring Israel, the new album, studying Torah, and...show tunes.

How did you decide to record your recent documentary in Israel—was there something about the country, or the time, or something else, that made that tour more videogenic? And how did you wind up touring Israel in the first place? Well Israel was the easternmost point of 45 shows we played in 2006. I had gotten with a booking agent for the first time. We talked about what I would and wouldn’t want to do. He asked me if there was one place out of the ordinary I’d like to play. I didn’t hesitate. At first I wasn’t sure if there were fans there…I found out there were. One Hasid sent a book with his sister thanking me for naming the band Silver Jews. Before he found religion, he found the Silver Jews and wanted to thank me, despite the fact that the he no longer went to concerts or listened to secular music.

When did people start asking about the "Jews" part of your band name? Jews of the “don’t make trouble” variety haven’t been a cultural force for a while. Political correctness was the topic of the day when I came up with the name. Perhaps I thought people would be forced to speak politely about the band. But really, “Jew,” it’s a beautiful word. It looks good too. The J is so unique, the e, so affable, the w, so strong. Despite all the professional show business Jews who changed their names, I’m going to make the name stick out. So if you are counterintuitive and a natural contrarian like I was in 1992, trying to be all conceptual, you might choose such a name.

Are you still studying Torah? I read it everyday but I don’t perform the mitzvot. I am some kind of sub-junior Jew-in-waiting.

What was that like for you when you started—were people instantly like, "oh, a Jewish indie band"? Only people in Britain said the word indie back then. We were duly classified as “lo-fi”. But I since we didn’t play shows, I don’t know what they thought. People would call it a Pavement side project.

Do you go through phases of writing poems and phases of writing songs, or does it all happen together? It’s never at the same time. It’s always the only thing going on. But there are long stretches where I just read.

What about the idiom of country music appeals to you—did you grow up listening to it, or is it just that particular shade of gothic Americana? I like the narrative nature. The stories. The mix of humor and despair. It’s just something I’ve always been fond of. When I was a kid I did like the pop country of that time better than the hard rock music. Here’s an example: “Somebody’s Knocking” by Terri Gibb. If you listen to that you can hear how uncountry country got in 1981. It’s weird that she won country female vocalist of the year on that.

Where did the title—and, I guess, the idea—Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea come from? It’s a play on words for Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. “Lookout Sea” can obviously be heard as “lookout see.” I had a cornea transplant in January of 2007, and a lot of vision motifs are in the lyrics.

This new album seems like a weird progression in several directions—it's more poppy, if that's not too pretentious to say. But it's also…well, not darker than your previous stuff, but maybe a more finely developed sense of darkness? I see it as more open to the uninitiated. It’s not inward looking, it’s outward looking. And clarity is an aesthetic value on this one. So what you say is right.

There's a lot more call-and-response vocal stuff going on here—and this record finds your entire band from the last album intact. Has songwriting become more of a collaborative effort? What's it like to tell someone else, "Here, sing these lines"? The arranging is collaborative. That part of making music is done pretty fast, if the blueprint is complete enough to work with. Writing the songs with other voices in mind just widens the possible cast of characters. It’s one small step towards show tunes, but I don’t plan on exploring that territory.

Careful, Shia: that jack don't got your backShia LaBeouf wants equal time. How else do you explain his latest in a series of arrests, warrants, and court dates each with their own, unique alcohol-related story? You see, when Shia recently decided to get drunk, flip his ride like a turtle on its back, then stagger out of his truck in a boozy haze proclaiming, “You mean we’re not filming a scene for Transformers 2?” he made his intentions clear. Shia LaBeouf wants the same amount of attention as inebriated gals like Nicole, Britney, and Lindsay; and he’s willing to do anything to get it.

Sure, his two Vanity Fair covers were nice, but getting arrested after being drunk and obnoxious in a Walgreen’s earned Shia a chat with David Letterman. Starring in two of the summer’s biggest blockbusters undoubtedly garnered LaBeouf accolades, but an arrest for smoking, followed by a forgotten court date, earned him international magazine covers. You can hire the best publicist in town but without a scandal, you’re just another actor trying to get some attention.

And that's the rub: you don’t actually need a job or a skill to be revered by the masses. Get some celebrity friends, couple that with a drug or alcohol problem, and you’re one arrest away from hosting your own reality show. You may even win an Emmy! Thing is, there's a long list of those who drew the short end of the Hollywood Scandal stick. For every Hugh Grant--whose career benefited from his game of “Don’t Tell My Girlfriend” with a Hollywood Boulevard hooker--there are countless Rob Lowe’s, whose scandal actually costs them something, namely a job.

So Shia, you may want to adopt another plan of attack. If you just can’t wait for a cab and don’t want to shell out the money for a driver, how about driving yourself over to a local AA meeting? Sure, it won’t be so anonymous, “Hi my name is Shia….”, but at least you’ll get some attention. And isn’t that what you’re really after?

If not, I’ve got two words for you: Russell Crowe.

 

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or email.

Title: The Women’s Bible Commentary, Man’s Search for Meaning, Beginning Anew Author: Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, Viktor Frankl, Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith Kates Description: Three books seem to me particularly dependable. First, the Women’s Bible Commentary, (URJ Press 2007), offers high quality biblical and rabbinic scholarship, contemporary reflections, and poetry on the 54 portions of the Torah. Second, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon 2006 or scads of used paperback editions) always moves me with its belief that we become more truly human by making meaning from our sufferings. Third, I bring Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith Kates’s collection Beginning Anew (Simon & Schuster 1997) to shul with me every High Holidays to read during the boring parts, and I always find some insight that reminds me why I need to be there. Whether it's Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg's stellar essay on the death of Sarah and the binding of Isaac or Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi on "Brothers and Others" or Judith Plaskow on Leviticus 18, sexuality, and teshuva, Beginning Anew always offers some sustaining truth. Recommended By: Rachel Adler is Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College-Los Angeles and author of Engendering Judaism which won a National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought.

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or tips. For more New Jew Canon recommendations, visit Jewcy's New Jew Canon Listmania.

Previously: Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic, recommended by Ari Y. Kelman

The story below is a better introduction to Daniel Elkind than even I, a friend of years, could provide. Also, he's asked me to keep it short.
Born in Moscow, raised in Philadelphia and suburban New Jersey, living in Brooklyn. A novel and more stories are forthcoming, for our gratitude.

- Joshua Cohen, Fiction Editor

 

It's an old story: a father brings his son to the Land, as promised, and the son - though far from prodigal - repays his father with shame, becoming American. Like most immigrant kids, I, too, at one time, was ashamed; though it was not his accent or the way he smelled, but the coins my father made me use - coins disfigured and torn, warped, "But not void," he said; "legal tender." Coins scarred and tarnished he brought home in his hands, sympathetically cracked and dirty, and gave them to us to use at school and in rollerskate rinks, mostly nickels and quarters salvaged from old Chevrolets and Toyotas and Buicks he had put through the shredder at the scrapyard where he worked - nickels and quarters forgotten amid the fluff that was once the gaps between seats or the glove compartment. After school I'd load them into slots and get change, less but shiny, to avoid having to convince the ladies at lunch that my money was good even though there had been a pogrom: Jefferson had only one eye, and Monticello was razed down to one story. When we'd go over the bridge he'd roll down the window and hand the indifferent toll booth blacks his corrugated metal chips as I looked at the city beyond and the grey water below, feeling touched and embarrassed, hoping my son's love would show through the gaps in my ingratitude and trying to understand that this was his acceptance, his assimilation, just as I was his accomplice in survival, and that in his eyes he was only the picture of a decent father: he didn't smoke, didn't drink, and never let the four of us go a day without enough to eat, which only added to the burden - the unforgivable debt that was not his fault either. My acceptance lay in my embarrassment; my shame sustained me. I remember not knowing what the bent coins said about what my father looked like inside. Falling asleep, I drew pictures of the world in which change came from old cars and was further recycled by the children of immigrants who didn't have time to understand that money has to look like money, too. I dreamed of some kind of respect, some kind of stability and esteem, which exceeded me in the daytime and wanted different preoccupations, different worries, and an attention that focused on different aspects of the same basic doubt whereas my father was the right hand of God's own optimism. After several hundred dollars in mangled coins he proved something to himself about a childhood I only vaguely knew had been unfair and insulting. He left the scrapyard after six or seven years. That spring an immigrant with the same name killed himself and his wife and her friend in our old neighborhood, a woman we happened to know, and for a day or two our phone rang with voices asking if what was true was true. My father - I remember - was shocked, incredulous, sad, and relieved. His hands got cleaner as he got older and a hole grew at the top of his head. As for me, I got older, too, squandering some of the years and managing to save not a single crushed coin though the money looks like money now and his house will always be my house, still I live with surreal pride and some esteem under a pseudonym: I rent an apartment of refuge in his name.

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Calling all Jewcers! We are having a party! And it is TONIGHT!

Starting at 7:00, Author Adam Mansbach will be joining us for an exclusive chat about The End of The Jews, his new book about ethnic identity, music, and cross-generational ties.

He will be joined in discussion by Keith Gessen, editor in cheif of n+1 and contributor to the Atlantic, New York Magazine, Slate, and New York Review of Books.

Gessen says of the book, "When I hear the words multigenerational Jewish epic I usually reach for my yarmulke. But Mansbach creates something else here, and his novel makes for more tough-minded reading than we are used to on this subject...This is a heartfelt, truthful book."

Oh, and did we forget to mention that JDub will be providing the music for the evening? And that they're bringing some special guests (you didn't hear it from us.)

And if that wasn't enough enticement, our friends at Schmaltz Brewing are going to make sure the He'Brew is a-flowing.

So, do it! And before you head out the door, send a quick " "Hell yes, I will be there!" to RSVP@Jewcy.com.

The party goes down at the Jewcy Bat cave, 45 Main Street, suite 613 in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Starting Out in the Evening: now available on DVDThere’s a New York you don’t read about anymore but you should. It’s the one in which the Ansonia is still a residence hotel on the Upper West Side, catering to dying salesmen, down-at-heel hucksters, and catchpenny gutter philosophers. It’s the one where you walk into a Woolworth’s to discuss Marx and Wilde while having your roast beef flooded with flour gravy. It’s the one where middle-class poverty is not only livable but the cause for political fellowship, and where cigarettes are allowed everywhere, and you get a strange look if you ask someone to put his out. It’s the New York of Leonard Schiller in bloom.

Sadly, when we meet him in Starting Out in the Evening, a subtle and fine film that was adapted from Brian Morton’s novel of the same name and recently released on DVD, most of the color has gone out of his life and work. Played wonderfully by Frank Langella, Leonard is a forgotten novelist and who’s been writing his fifth and, in all likelihood, final book for about a decade. His others, bearing titles such as Tenderness and The Lost City, have long been out of print, and he seems resigned to his status as a has-been until an ambitious and comely young graduate student Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) offers to help revive his reputation by writing her Masters thesis on him. This is the moment some older gentlemen of letters must wait for all their lives, but Leonard is reluctant. He wants to be left alone in his hermitage, and nothing about him, from his careful and precise speech to his outdated wardrobe, makes this request appear confected out of false modesty. After being told by a publisher that the industry is now all “celebrity confessions and self-help books,” Leonard reconsiders. However, in agreeing to be interviewed and scrutinized, especially by a biographer-critic who wears her confidence as lushly as her lipstick, he is soon drawn into the kind of literary relationship that has felled less disciplined talents.

I suppose I’ve already given the game away, but Leonard’s dynamic with Heather turns out to be less Johnson and Boswell, more Salinger and Maynard. There are moments that do seem forced and incredible between the two; one involving honey, more about which you’ll have to hate me for not disclosing. Yet there is a quiet dignity, on par with Schiller’s own, to the way director Andrew Wagner allows what could have been a queasy and eccentric love affair – Harold and Maude take Broadway, with the gender roles reversed – to develop as naturally as any other. It helps that that common language is a dead one: literature. “A New York Jew imitates D.H. Lawrence at his own peril,” Leonard tells Heather in answer to one of her early questions, delivering a line that may not send the average twentysomething’s panties flying off, but has a definite effect on her. Heather finds men her own age like chewing gum, “ten minutes of flavor, then just bland repetition," and she is both worshipful and peremptory toward Leonard, taking liberties she thinks that having an intimate knowledge of his fictional characters has afforded her with respect to his own secluded existence. But even her easy working rapport with her subject doesn’t give her the right to interrupt his daily writing schedule (“Maybe a little shakeup in the routine is just what Leonard needs”), which he adheres to with a religious exactness. Indeed, a scene of Leonard hunched over his typewriter with his hands folded as if in prayer opens and closes Starting Out, two bookends reminding us that we should seek elsewhere for a romantic study of an artistic lion in winter.

Another bookend to complement the theme of Leonard and Heather: the fractious on-again off-again relationship Leonard’s daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor), a failed dancer turned pilates instructor, shares with Casey (Adrian Lester), recently moved back to New York from Chicago, whose refusal to conceive a child with her accounts for the off-again bit. Though gentle and disarming, Casey has big plans of his own – he wants to found a leftwing little magazine – and they only include Ariel as a sideline cheerleader. She kids herself that their second go-round can remain “hot and light,” and his self-absorption is amplified by Leonard’s lone recognition of it; though that, too, like an aged oeuvre, can be forgotten. After Leonard suffers a debilitating stroke, it falls to Casey to help him through one humiliating geriatric episode. The result is another unlikely bond forged between young and old, and this one actually seems stronger.

It should be noted that the title of Morton’s novel borrowed from Alfred Kazin’s Starting Out in the Thirties, one of the more eloquent – if also mean-spirited and score-settling – memoirs about the celebrated New York Intellectuals, of which Leonard was clearly envisioned as one. (Kazin had a brief cameo in the book.) So it’s a shame there’s only a single direct on-screen allusion made to this dazzling and mythologized milieu, and that it’s made by an editor at the Village Voice: “Bellow, Schwartz. To be honest, I was never really interested in that crowd. I imagined them as a bunch of white guys in suits going to bed early.” That’s as good a reason as any to remember why you stopped reading the Voice. Here’s Schwartz filtered through Bellow in Humbolt’s Gift: “You don't know what you're missing. I'm a poet. I have a big cock.”

Who knows? There might have been a time when even the mannered Leonard Schiller talked like that.

 

The German Bride: nary an 'oy' to be foundThe German Bride, Joanna Hershon’s third novel, is that rare thing: a historical novel that unfolds organically without a whole lot of “Look at me! I’m a historical novel!”

Her first two novels, Swimming and The Outside of August, both beautifully drawn contemporary narratives, prepared me not at all for this imaginative, deeply researched tale of the American frontier as inhabited by German Jews in the nineteenth century. It’s not exactly the usual “Jewish” setting we’ve come to expect from contemporary “Jewish” novelists (you know, mix-and-match: psychiatry, the Holocaust, masturbation, Yiddishism), which is perhaps why the New York Times couldn’t quite figure out how to properly essentialize: the title and opening of the Times review are pretty goddamn idiotic and offensive given that Hershon’s novel has nothing whatsoever to do with Yiddish culture.

But hey! It’s a “Jewish” novel about 19th century pioneer Jews in the great, untamed west -- throw out an “Oy” and a reference to “Blazing Saddles” and that oughta do it, right? Um, no.

If you’re interested in a somewhat more nuanced, thoughtful peek, check out the fascinating interview Hershon gave to Ha’aretz.

And pick up a copy of this gem for your more discerning literary friends. (Your other friends will probably do just fine with this.)

Shortly before the beginning of seventh grade, when I entered the public school system for the first time after spending my earliest formative years at Nebraska’s only Jewish day school (student body: 37), my mother came to me with a warning. It wasn’t her intention to scare me, she explained, but she wanted to make sure I was prepared for some of the challenges that lay ahead.

“What challenges?” I asked. “What do you mean?” I wasn’t expecting the schoolwork to give me any trouble, and my grandmother had recently furnished me with several new back-to-school ensembles from the Limited that I was certain could at least partially smooth over my problem of not having any social skills.

My mother paused for a very long time before she spoke. “It’s possible that you may have to face some…anti-Semitism.”

Anti-Semitism. It wasn’t precisely clear to me what a Semite was, but I knew what it meant to be anti one. It meant you hated Jews and wanted them dead.

The existence of such a prejudice was hardly news; the bookshelves in my room groaned under the weight of solemn tales of the Holocaust and the pogroms, stories festooned with grim illustrations of terrified children laden with bundles, peering helplessly through pen and ink fence of barbed wire. My parents had their own stories: anti-Semitism was the reason my immigrant grandmother refused to let her children go swimming with the non-Jewish neighbors, why my father had been beaten up several times a week on his way home from junior high by roaming gangs of feral Gentile children.

But that was years ago.

“I’m not saying it will happen,” she continued, “but I want you to prepare for it if it does.”

As I had not yet learned that my mother’s general pessimism towards the human race was not always based in tangible reality, her warnings filled me with a consuming, atavistic sense of dread. When would the assault come, and in what form? Would I be shunned in the cafeteria or disinvited from birthday parties? Would I be physically attacked: trapped in lockers or forced to gather change from the floor as a gang of Esprit-clad Aryans mocked the parsimoniousness of my race? At the very least, I assumed I would be taunted verbally with cries of “kike” and “yid”; “heebie” and “hook-nose” and “Red Sea pedestrian” and other racial epithets I learned from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.

“You forgot sheeny,” said my mother.

“I thought that was an Irish person.”

“Nope. You’re a sheeny.”

As time passed, I would hear all those words and more. What my mother didn’t tell me is that they would mostly come from other Jews.

Everywhere, young Jews are eagerly, even gleefully appropriating the traditional iconography and language of anti-Semites faster than you can say “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” We howled with laughter at Borat, at the grotesque puppet in “The Running of the Jew” laying its “filthy Jew-egg” as Sacha Baron Cohen spewed der Sturmer-worthy invective in pidgin Hebrew. We read publications with names like Heeb and Jewcy, and cheerfully throw around terms and stereotypes that would have sent previous generations straight to the local ADL office. Recently, I was watching TV at home when I received a phone call from a co-religionist friend.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m at home, watching The Jewish Americans on PBS.”

“Yeah? What’s happening?”

“Oh, I guess this episode is on Leo Frank. But as far I as can see, the whole thing is mostly about how we’re ugly and everybody hates us.” We dissolved with laughter.

There are a number of possible reasons for this change in attitude. The age we are living in is a peculiar one, equal parts irony and genuine turmoil. Festering internecine and tribal hatreds have once again become a very real part of how the world operates; as a result, political correctness has died an unceremonious death, while multiculturalism is dying a somewhat more tortuous one. At the same time, overt intolerance has become nearly obsolete, to the point that one can perpetuate almost any form of prejudice with the implicit understanding that if the speaker is of a certain social class or education level, he or she cannot possibly be a bigot. On a strictly Jewish level, I think my generation has simply lost patience with our Hebrew school educations, with the constant focus on victimhood and hardship, and the sometimes reactionary politics of the Jewish establishment—with the powerful lobbies and their professional outrage, the shell-shocked parents and grandparents ever at the ready to pick up a phone or file a formal complaint the second a Jewish child is made to sing “Silent Night” or assigned a biology midterm on Yom Kippur (I speak from personal experience here.) There are better things to do with one’s time than to be constantly on guard against closet Nazis. Or maybe after 5000 years of the being on the wrong end of the world’s general shittiness, we’ve just stopped taking it so personally.

But to borrow a phrase from David Mamet in The Wicked Son, his provocative and occasionally infuriating book on the subject, “The world hates the Jews. The world has always and will continue to do so.”

Fine.

In this, my mother was right. All of our mothers were right. My generation, we American Jews in our 20’s and 30’s, may have missed having taunts and dirt clods thrown at our heads as we waited for the school bus, but you don’t have to look very far to find our people held in general contempt. In fact, don’t look hard at all—just look in the comments section of any major internet blog that so much as mentions the State of Israel, the Holocaust, Steven Spielberg, or boiled chicken.

So welcome to The Protocols, named of course for the famous (and forged) Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or as I like to think of it, the book that started the international craze, the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone of twentieth century anti-Semitism. Here, I’ll strive to answer the important questions—not so much “Why do they hate us?” but “So what if they hate us?” I’ll look at how Jews have, for better and for worse, internalized the tenets of anti-Semitism and turned them inside out, how Jews judge other Jews, and what it means to be a self-hating Jew (as opposed to a Jewish self-hater.) I’ll examine anti-Semites through history, anti-Semites in the news, and once every few weeks or so, anti-Semites we love. (And yes, I’m taking recommendations.)

My qualifications for this mighty task, taken on by everyone from Moses Maimonides, Mark Twain, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Adolf Hitler? None whatsoever; except I’ma writer, I’m a Jew, and I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my life worrying about who doesn’t like me.

So, my fellow filthy Christ-killers, if you can stop counting your golden ingots and draining your neighbor’s kids of their blood long enough to actually read something, I hope you’ll join me. We may not win any hearts and minds, but in the words of the immortal G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.

And after all, we’re supposed to be so smart.

Since its release in 1982, Jacob Goldwasser's first feature, Under The Nose (Mitahat La'af) has acquired cult status in Israel, setting the cinematic standard for portraying domestic social problems for many years to come. To mark its 25th anniversary in 2007, Under The Nose was released on DVD. A script book was also recently published which included an interview with the director and the scriptwriter, three essays, and a short story inspired by the film — a rare event for a cultural scene in which the study of film is sparse.

Under The Nose is based on an incident that made headlines in Israel in 1976. In what was initially reported as a daring and sophisticated crime, burglars penetrated Jaffa’s police headquarters and removed a safe containing 3 million Lira (the name of Israel’s currency until 1977). The capture of the burglars revealed them to be small time criminals, who clumsily carried out the burglary, and whose success was traced to their luck, and, mainly, to the ineptitude of Jaffa’s police to prevent such an event from taking place in their very own HQ.

Goldwasser and his scriptwriter, Haim Merin, turn the story into a parable about the margins of Israeli society. Sammy and Herzl, the two main characters, who are played by Uri Gavriel and Moshe Ivgy respectively are small time criminals, who in the Israel of the late 1970s and early 1980s (as well as today), would be triply marginalized: Mizrachi in a world where Ashkenazi Jews rule; poor in a society that is taking quick strides to dismantle its public sector and adopt American-style capitalism; and obscure players in a milieu where prestige—built on competence and dare—counts for everything.

Sammy and Herzl dream of the big strike that would deliver them from their marginalized positions, make their reputation, secure their financial needs, and provide them with the means of starting a new life in Amsterdam. When Sami reads a story in the newspaper about a safe full of foreign cash that is located at Jaffa’s police headquarters, he turns to Janna, his childhood hero, known in his prime as the “Climbing Cat,” played by the one time actor Zadok Zarum. His enthusiasm pulls Janna out of retirement, and together they plan the crime.

However, the solidarity of the group begins to disintegrate when Jacob Haguel, played by the late Jucky Arkin—Herzl’s brother in law (Janna’s former partner, now a used car dealer) who plays cards regularly and always loses—forces himself on the three. The gang pulls off the burglary, despite the fact that Sammy gets completely drunk on the eve of the event, and Jacob gets nervous and leaves the crime scene without the group’s getaway car, without waiting for his friends.

Detective Ben-Shushan, played by the Israeli-Palestinian actor Makram Khoury, is given the task of solving the crime. Ben-Shushan believes that the burglary was committed by local people, rather than by an international gang as Police Chief Superintendent Hason would have it. The names of all of the characters involved are markedly Mizrachi. The conflict in the movie is, therefore, not one between the Mizrachi underclass and the Ashkenazi establishment and upper class, as Israeli films (to the present) are wont to depict it, but an internal Mizrachi affair. This is the case, even if some of the Mizrachi characters clearly serve Israel’s Ashkenazi-dominated establishment, as the huge portrait of David Ben Gurion hanging at Chief Superintendent Hason’s office indicates.

Under The Nose’s portrayal of Mizrachim served as an important precursor to Benny Toraty’s 2001 film Desperado Square (Kikar Ha-Halomot), which likewise presents a world without Ashkenazim. Both films dismiss the traditional portrayal of Mizrachi-Ashkenazi class conflict in order to focus on the internal mechanisms of the Mizrachi dream of transcending their underclass status in Israeli society. Toraty’s film takes place in a poor neighborhood, inhabited exclusively by Mizrachim. The film tells of brothers Nissim and George’s struggle to reopen their father’s cinema and to screen once more the Indian films that once captivated their neighbors. Toraty’s film suggests that movies, specifically the communal experience of watching films, offers not only refuge from one’s daily miseries, but also transform their viewers’ lives. Desperado Square is a paean to cinema and its emancipatory power. Goldwasser’s characters, on the other hand, struggle to realize themselves within the very real strictures imposed upon them by Israeli society and by their own psychology. Crime is the central component of their fantasy of breaking away from these constraints. The characters’ failure to transcend their situation, however, is of their own doing.

When the four burglars assemble to crack the safe and divide the loot, Sammy refuses to hand Haguel his share; he now imagines himself a bigshot, and pays no heed to Janna’s pleas and forewarning that this would endanger all of them. Unbeknownst to his lifelong friend Herzl, he plans to leave Israel for Amsterdam with his girlfriend. When he does not show up to a reconciliation meeting arranged by Janna, Herzl goes looking for him. When Herzl finds him and realizes that Sammy is on his way to the airport, he stabs him, just as police officers, who have been informed by Haguel and were following him, arrest them both.

As well as its social insights, Under The Nose is a commentary on the relevance of the Israeli cinematic models that had preceded it. Specifically, the film critiques the Bourekas social comedies popular in Israel in the 1970s and early 1980s (such as Boaz Davidson’s 1974 film Charlie and a Half and Menachem Golan’s Kazablan, that came out the same year). These comedies relied on stock characters and lowbrow humor, often ending with a wedding that marked the resolution of conflict and a new beginning. Goldwasser’s film not only diverges from the Bourekas stereotypes, but also demystifies the artificiality of social reconciliation in Israel that these comedies consistently presented. Under The Nose offers no such reconciliation, neither between Mizrachim and the establishment, nor between the characters in the story.

Goldwasser has also pointed out that Martin Scorsese’s 1973 film Mean Street has influenced him greatly. Sammy and Herzl could thus be seen as a local version of Charlie and Johnny Boy and their struggle to climb up the mafia ladder. Yet, while self-sacrifice is central to Scorsese’s film (Charlie sacrifices himself on behalf of Johnny Boy), Goldwasser’s characters are incapable of such an act, and it is their inability to see beyond their own inflated egos that leads to their downfall.

Under The Nose also bears reference to European crime comedies such as Mario Monicelli’s 1958 Big Deal on Madonna Street, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman. A farce about a group of incompetent ne’er-do-wells who plan to burglarize a state-run pawn-shop through an adjacent apartment and find themselves, after many hours in the kitchen of that very same apartment, Big Deal likewise sets its characters head over shoulder in a situation well beyond their meager abilities. In Under The Nose, on the other hand, the crime is indeed comic, but not its consequences. Following the theft, the film turns into a Greek tragedy, in which doom is traced to flaws of character. Yet, this drama is quite frustrating, precisely because of its hopeless conclusion.

What these three films share is their use of the fabled “crime scene” to explore the way that their characters conceive of their masculinity, and how their self-image as men shapes their relationship with women. In Under The Nose, the predominant female character in the film is the safe (the noun for ‘safe’ is feminine in Hebrew). Cracking it is portrayed as a rape scene. Flesh and blood women characters, on the other hand, are under-developed and this is arguably the weakest aspect of the film. Still, it is Sammy’s girlfriend who, in the end, succeeds where all the male characters have failed. Witnessing Sammy and Herzl’s arrest, she proceeds to the airport with Sammy’s share of the burglary and makes it to Amsterdam. While men are ‘captured’ by their social and personal limitations, the film ultimately suggests that the hope for liberation should be pinned on women.

Donari Braxton has written brave quantities of fiction, poetry, theater, and "cross-genre work," and has also translated. His writing has been widely anthologized in the UK and the United States, and his first collection of stories, I, will be succeeded in 2008 by a second. Presently he lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is at work on a novel.
Here are my favorite lines of this story - "These Hollows, and Suchlike" - which is funning on both us and itself, anything but "hollow" and yet, full of holes:
"Jewish humor, I supposed. Choggys liked Jewish humor. And so I asked him flat-out: ‘Jewish humor, my nigga?'"
Dr. Choggys West has appeared in Braxton's fiction before. One hopes he will have the occasion to consult with us again.

- Joshua Cohen, Fiction Editor


"I want you to tell me your favorite word in 1994."
"My favorite word."
"In 1994, yes."
"No."
"Be a sport," said Choggys real rationally-like.
But I was being a sport, I insisted to Choggys, who scowled and added:
"Be an art then," he added, so to that I quickly stammered off:
"Ask me again?"
"1994 please, your favorite word."
"Hiccups."
Choggys hesitated before asking, "And presently?"
"Yes."

†

Dr. Choggys West had one rule. Don't be a push-over, and the vowel, always, is the tonic syllable. I didn't see how the second rule related to helping me grow as an individual, so I said that to Choggys, and asked him what kind of therapy he practiced. "Hula-hoop." "The fuck outta here," I told him. So vaguely twinkling like a loose basement tug-incandescent he added, "And if I keep it up, I may even get my degree."
Jewish humor, I supposed. Choggys liked Jewish humor. And so I asked him flat-out: "Jewish humor, my nigga?"
And Choggys sniggered and uttered nonchalantly:
"Why, are you Jewish?"
"Would that premise my question?" I asked.

"Would that pr'e'mise my q'ues'tion?"
"Would that pr'e'mise my q'ues'tion?"
"Would that pr'E'mise my q'ues'tion?"
"Would that pr'E'mise my q'ues'tion?"

"Better, Donari, better."

†

"I want you to tell me about your very first memory."
"I was a hole."
"You were a hole."
"Correct."
"Do you mean you were a sperm?"
"No, I do not."
"Were you referring to your mother's vagina then, Donari?"
"I certainly was not."
"Tell me about it then," pronounced Choggys in a very phony Arabic with a fake German accent-Freud, I suppose, was the idea-that didn't entirely crucify the vowels; diphthongs, ablauts, even emoticons over obscure lower-case i's reeked of discriminate meaning when he vomited them up, so that if he were in the midst of confessing his sins, on the brinks of orgasm, making pp's or war-talking the enemy, each word made a kind of finger-print in the ear of the listener, not one identical to another and so on.
Choggys was actually a Russian and in reality one-half-parts Jewish but three-parts water, like a woman.
He wasn't listening and I wasn't listening and at some point Choggys was saying the following:
"My motto, prior to playing Rasputin under the Saudi Prince, is to always make of the vowel the tonic syllable."
"I know that already, doc," I told Dr. Choggys.
"Subsequ'ently, for example."
"Subsequ'ently, for e'xample."
"Wiederholen Sie bitte."

D'i'nosaur, l'it're'ture, e'xtra'o'dinar'y, supercalafragel'i'sticexpialadocious.
Sophistication will saturate you over motherfucker, he reassured me.
MEINE Raffinesse is sehr, sehr gut, he reassured me.

†

Our sessions took to the street when the traveling Russian circus came to make its three-day festival of our tiny, unpronounceable village, and Choggys, parading through it, exuded confidence for everyone's benefit, making small talk with peasant folk, women and Africans in the Russian language. Had they been Arabic speakers like myself, he'd never have acknowledged their existence. If I'd asked him: ‘What did that one just say, Dr. Choggys?' then Choggys would not translate their words, but rather summarize for them their words, and usually proceed by briefly psychoanalyzing them, too. I offer an example:
This one says that he wonders what I am doing in this country, and if I am a diplomat. I told him that he should be careful to ask only questions that require definite answers, the Maoist.

Dr. Choggys had pushed a young Slav into the mud who had stepped on Dr. Choggys' shoes. He tiptoed over the man and sniggered.
"In a mud-puddle, I am the absence of mud-puddle," Choggys recited above the filthy young Slav, temporarily blinded and very, very sad.
But then, just beyond the mud-puddle where the Slav had once been standing, some form of gambling slot-machine in fact was what was missing, and I said Look! and Choggys, half-embarrassed, turned and made to walk away. But I insisted for health reasons. I said: After all, Dr. Choggys, I'm paying for this!
Choggys had no choice but to walk back and pull down on the machine's ruby-knobbed lever.
First its currency detector declined Choggys' money, but secondly I put in a coin and the six reels started spinning patterns of symbols that couldn't have belonged to a rainbow, as if six-thousand eyeballs were rolling back in its head. Choggys would have glanced over to shit on my superstition, but he couldn't look away either, and soon the reels began to accelerate exponentially, and the ready symbols of colors bled into a canon, whipping around snow-gloss that gleamed like diamonds, then vacuumed itself up again suction-cup-like.
Through the loud, schlocky humming of the machine, the young Slav had risen to his feet and came to stand beside us. Choggys told me, "Put another coin back in, stupid Fuck!" And Choggys screamed to the Slav in Russian, "You, clean yourself up!"
But the machine was at rest, and the symbols were letters, and the letters, we couldn't help but notice, almost certainly spelled hollow.
"Us holes," I began to tell Choggys, who I'm sure was piqued by the sight of an irrepressible smile bubbling under my lips, "us holes just have nothing to lose."
"Oh shut the fuck up," replied Dr. Choggys.
I guess he thought I was only I-told-you-so'ing, but smugly, having figured him out long before, I wasn't.

†

"There's more to a hole than the gravity," I began to answer his question. "More than the plummet, there are also the feelings, like the feeling of passing from one thing to the next, hibernation..."
"Oh go fuck yourse-"
"Wonderland rabbits, for instance, will come and go through a half-sister of mine, and another one, my grandfather's brother, was the barrel through which Kennedy got slugged."
"Ja ja ja ja ja ja!" He exclaimed his disinterest.
"Friends of mine are just about everything imaginable, from trenches so-to-speak where tyrants pigeonholed, to Manhattan manholes, puncture wounds and wormholes, chimneys on anthills and assholes, et cetera."
And finally, I noticed, Dr. Choggys was beginning to listen.
"Believe me, Dr. Choggys, well-born parents will mobilize and leave eyelets for blue blood, exhaust-pipes on Benzes, famous popstars' gold pie-holes and other such things, though all prearranged, these hollows and suchlike, just as everywhere across the board in existing."
"You," diagnosed Choggys West, "are a dirty, dirty man."
Was.
I was a great gaping hole. Succussing the shit left from passers-by by gurgling it right into the soil. Ingesting it straight into the soul of the earth. Speaking to myself quite often.
But by then, however, Dr. Choggys was hup! so sorry, afraid that our time was up.

During the late 1970s, I can't remember how many times my siblings and I would hear a song on the radio--most often English-language pop and disco--and try to sing along. We'd mimic the lyrics, switching back and forth between English and Hebrew as we unsuccessfully attempted to master particularly difficult American-sounding turns of phrase. Boney M's 1978 mega-hit "Rasputin," and Earth, Wind and Fire's 1979 smash "Boogie Wonderland" were particular sources of amusement, as friends and family would struggle to properly enunciate "R" and "W," sounding, in the case of "Vonderland," like Israeli caricatures of Bela Lugosi.

We tried to be forgiving of each other, but sometimes it just wasn't so easy. As a family composed of multilingual Israeli parents and British-educated adolescents, we were no strangers to the embarrassment of lacking fluency in such a resolutely complex linguistic context. However, it made appearing cool and hip that much harder, especially when it came to showing off our knowledge of popular music. "Stairvey to Cheaven," I can recall an older relative singing in our car once, as the Led Zeppelin song came on the Voice of Peace station. That time, I had to work a little harder than usual to stifle a laugh. I was ten years old, and at that age, anyone's shame was my own personal gain--especially when I could congratulate myself for knowing better than a longhaired twenty-something.

Listening to the new Numero Group compilation Soul Messages From Dimona is like being transported right back to that time. An anthology of soul, funk and disco by Black Hebrews who'd decamped to Dimona (home to Israel's sole nuclear reactor) this twelve-track collection recorded between 1975 and 1981 sounds exactly like what everyone would have done back then if they'd happen to have gotten everything right--including the air guitar. Consisting of tracks by four different bands made up of veteran musicians from Chicago and Detroit, this surprising, highly politicized collection is a stark reminder that despite the overwhelmingly Anglo-American rock leanings of Israeli bands like Kaveret, there was some remarkable urban music being produced in the country during the 1970s that was every bit as good as The O’Jays.

Okay, so the few efforts at Hebrew on this CD sound just as clumsy as Israeli attempts at sounding like African-Americans. But damned if, when the religious pretense is dropped, each one of the groups on Soul Messages delivers musical goods that sound unlike anything else that was happening in the Middle East at the time. Indeed, the funk and jazz-damaged instrumental workouts on this album are frequently stunning and exhude an almost avant-garde quality--not only musically but also in terms of cultural context. When The Spirit of Israel sings “I just want to live in Israel/Live a life of purity" in “A Place to Be’” these four bands’ work takes on an immensely profound significance, especially when you realize that the song was most likely written in the shadow of a factory producing the region’s first nuclear weaponry.

If what you want is to encounter a quintessentially “Israeli” record that inhabits the essence of local vernacular in all of its contradictory glory, you can't do any better than Soul Messages From Dimona. How can you argue, when the Tonistics praise their hometown on the final track: "Dimona, the spiritual capital of the world"? For a dusty desert community that feels like it is at the absolute end of the world (and, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have you think, a place that also threatens Iran's destruction), that lyric says an awful lot about how appropriately “native” this music really is--so much so that, of course, it would take me nearly 30 years to finally hear it, not in Israel, but America.