Gut Shabbes
The Jewish Review of Books mourns the passing of Harvey Pekar whose comics—with Tara Seibel’s gorgeous illustration—graced our first two issues.
Harvey was just in the office last week to pick up the new issue, and seemed in good contrarian form, wryly outraged by half a dozen news items. His last comic for us, “Gut Shabbes,” was a characteristically self-deprecating little story of the tension between secular and religious Jews. In its last panel, Harvey stares out at the reader in a mock Jack Benny pose (he was sure that we’d get the allusion). Click here to see Harvey’s “Crumb’s Genesis: A Graphic Review” from Spring 2010.
Suggested Reading
Moses and Hellenism
In a provocative new work recently published in German, Bernd Witte proposes nothing less than an “alternative history of German culture,” as the subtitle of his finely wrought work of scholarship tells us. Moses and Homer: Greeks, Jews, Germans is a historical and cultural argument animated by powerful indignation. This history, he insists, has yet to be fully confronted.
Silence of the Lambs
Sacrifice is both foreign and familiar. Actually sacrificing an animal is difficult to imagine, and yet we continue to speak freely of sacrifice in connection with political and moral obligations.
Redesecration and Solidarity in Greece
“Even if they vandalize the monuments one hundred times we will repair them one hundred and ten times,” pledged Yiannis Boutaris, the mayor of Thessaloniki, after the latest act of anti-Semitic destruction in the city.
Poems Like Mountains
“I was a year old,” Rivka Miriam says, “and my father would hold me in his arms and throw me up and down and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Each time he threw me up he’d yell in Yiddish ‘Rivkela Rivkela where’s Savta?’ ‘Killed.’ ‘Rivkela Rivkela where’s Miriam?’ ‘Killed.’ ‘Rivkela Rivkela where’s Chaim?’ ‘Killed.’ He’d say all the names…
Comments
You must log in to comment Log In