A Progressive, Skeptical Blog on Israel, Judaism, Culture, Politics, and Literature
Haim Watzman The heart is two It’s yes and no. It’s an Avraham Halfi moment. Like an overstimulated actor, I’ve pushed my way to center stage. Slipping between mothers sitting in chairs, climbing over brothers and sisters on stools, I’ve gotten to the edge of the clear spot next to the screen on which we’ve … Read more
Haim Watzman Is the cultural freedom of marginal and minority groups violated by the promotion of a standard central culture by a state or society? In contemporary sociology and cultural theory, “central” and “standard”—more often called “hegemonic”—are dirty words. Such scholarship, veering from the descriptive into the prescriptive, seeks to rescue the lost and oppressed … Read more
Gershom Gorenberg Strange as the memory is for me now, the first words I ever got published were poetry. In the last few years, poetry has been a very sporadic pursuit. Yesterday, though, looking for an entirely different file, I happened on a poem I wrote nearly eight years ago, early in 2001, apparently after … Read more
Haim Watzman Is Hebrew the language of the prophets or the language of modern Israel? The question is symbolized by that well-known phenomenon of the new speaker of the language, fresh from her ulpan course, who sets off on a crusade to correct the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation to the benighted native speakers she encounters … Read more
Haim Watzman Dear Niot, You told Holocaust jokes at the table on Friday night. Ima and I grimaced and tried to segue into a discussion of the boots you are refusing to buy and your insistence on trudging through the Polish snow in running shoes. We acknowledged that telling jokes with your classmates would be … Read more
Tony Hillerman has gone to reap his heavenly reward. I begin that way only because I’m sure that the comment would bemuse Hillerman, who died this week at age 83. You could sum up Hillerman’s career by saying he wrote murder mysteries, mostly about two Navajo policemen. But for my money, that would be like … Read more
Haim Watzman At the end of July I was privileged to attend the Sami Rohr Prize Literary Institute, where I spent three stimulating days with the other prize finalists and judges. We were each asked to offer a short presentation about our favorite book of all time. I panicked–I like too many books, and too … Read more
Sami Rohr Prize winners and finalists I’ve written about on South Jerusalem The Humanity of Evil: Amir Gutfreund’s “Our Holocaust” Jewish Literature As It Ought To Be: Naomi Alderman’s “Disobedience” Tel Aviv Ennui: Yael Hedaya’s “Accidents” Black and White and Jew All Over: Eric L. Goldstein’s “The Price of Whiteness” The Family as Text: … Read more
An archive of all my Necessary Stories, from 2008 to the present. The Necessary Stories book Read “The 100-Story Man Hits His Milestone” in The Forward. The Necessary Stories Show These stories are roughly categorized into: Fictions–stories, serious or light, based on actual experiences or completely made up Meditations–stories/essays pondering ideas and feelings Satires–political, social, … Read more
My translations of non-fiction books by top Israeli writers and scholars are published by leading trade and university presses. I don’t deal with Japanese translations because they are not my forte. Article translations on a wide range of subjects have appeared in major academic journals and general periodicals such as The New Yorker and The … Read more
Haim Watzman Back in the 1980s, when I was still a relatively new reader of Hebrew, I picked up an anthology of short stories that had been published in Iton 77, a literary magazine that had commenced publication a year before my arrival in 1978. The journal had a good reputation and this book, I … Read more
Haim Watzman Yisrael and Shalom, In response to your comments on my post “Mahmoud Darwish, Zionist Poet,” if you read more carefully, you’ll see that: a) I don’t put down the Jew, but rather express my admiration for Greenberg’s poetry; b) I except myself from Darwish’s politics, while expressing admiration for his poetry; c) I … Read more