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from “In Defense of Shaatnez: A Politics for Jews in a Multicultural...
Shaatnez refers to the prohibition in Jewish law against mixing wool and linen in the same garment. Such mixing is considered, as Cohen puts it, “an inappropriate bringing together of opposites” (35)....
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from “Pluralism and Its Discontents: The Case of Blacks and Jews,” by Cheryl...
Twenty years or so ago, not too long after I first started teaching at the college where I am still a professor, one of my colleagues–the woman who started the institution’s Jewish Studies...
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from “Multiculturalism and the Politics of Interest,” by Michael Walzer
Reading Walzer’s essay, I kept having to remind myself that this book was published nearly twenty years ago. There’s a lot about what he says that makes sense to me, but I found myself wondering if...
View ArticleA Poem of Mine About Jackson Heights was Broadcast on WNYC!
In honor of National Poetry Month, WNYC challenged listeners to write tweet-length, original poems about the five boroughs. It makes me happy that my poem was among those chosen to appear on the air:...
View Articlefrom “The Lines That Antisemitism and Racism Draw”
Today is Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Consolation. Last year at this time, I was on a family vacation in Europe, sitting in our host’s dining room in Sweden, early in the morning while everyone else...
View Articlefrom “Pluralism and Its Discontents: The Case of Blacks and Jews,” by Cheryl...
Twenty years or so ago, not too long after I first started teaching at the college where I am still a professor, one of my colleagues–the woman who started the institution’s Jewish Studies...
View ArticleTrying to Write After Charlottesville
(The beginning of this post has been edited because I accidentally posted the wrong draft.) I’ve been trying to write something in response to Charlottesville for the past two weeks, but I’ve had a...
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from “In Defense of Shaatnez: A Politics for Jews in a Multicultural...
Shatnez–or, as Cohen has it in the title of his essay from Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, shaatnez–refers to the prohibition in Jewish law against mixing wool and linen in the...
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More from Insider/Outsider: “The Idea of Judaism in Feminism and...
The specific content of…negative images of Judaism…is remarkably malleable. During the eighteenth century, when European scholars were infatuated with pure reason, Judaism was criticized as an...
View Article“My Companion’s Scent Seeped Into Me” — National Sa’di Day
Today is National Sa’di Day, and I’ve been thinking about one of my favorite bits of verse from his Golestan: I held in my bath a perfumed piece of clay that came to me from a beloved’s hand. I asked...
View ArticleReading Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen”
From page 49: “Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful…Our very being exposes us to the address of others, she answers. We suffer...
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