New stuff to read

Issue of January 29/ 14 Shvat 5770

A Fine Romance: Jewish

songwriters, American songs

By David Lehmen

Lehman, a critically acclaimed author and poet, examines why so many of the great American songs — from “Embraceable You” to “White Christmas,” — were written by Jews. Lehman maintains they give voice not only to a timeless America but to a timeless facet of Jewish identity. The Wizard of Oz composer Harold Arlen was the son of a cantor who managed to incorporate “Over the Rainbow” into his Shabbos liturgy.

The Death of the Shtetl

By Yehuda Bauer

Bauer, an internationally acclaimed Holocaust historian, describes the destruction of small Jewish townships, the shtetls, in the eastern part of Poland by the Nazis in 1941–1942. Bauer brings together all available documents, testimonies, and scholarship, including previously unpublished material from the Yad Vashem archives, pertaining to nine representative shtetls. What Bauer takes out of the work is that there really was no representative shtetl, though one thing was clear by 1942 according to Bauer: “There was no easy way to escape the shtetl and almost everyone wanted to escape.”

The Enigma of Isaac Babel:

Biography, History, Context

by Gregory Freidin

Who really was Isaac Babel? Babel, hailed as one of the finest Russian Jewish authors, was killed in Stalin’s Great Purge in 1939. His last words were reported to be: “Let me finish my work.” Red Cavalry, his fictional account of the time he spent with Cossacks, is a landmark classic. This is the first comprehensive view of the great Russian Jewish author since the opening of Soviet archives.