Vox Tablet

Hanna Rosin’s new book The End of Men argues that changes in the U.S. economy—specifically the vast reduction of manufacturing jobs combined with growth in health, human resources, education, and other traditionally female-dominated professions—are leaving men in the dust in corporate culture, at universities, in families, and in popular culture. To what extent are these trends reflected in Jewish American communal life and leadership? Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry is joined by Andy Bachman, rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn (and U.S. history and politics buff), and Shifra Bronznick, founding president of Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, to discuss Rosin’s thesis, and how it might resonate in a Jewish context. They speak as Jewish leaders, as people who are privy to the private concerns of Jewish men and women who are struggling with these changes, and as parents of sons and daughters who will have to navigate this new world. [Running time: 23:18.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Zach Fredman is a musician, composer, and rabbi-in-training now in his fifth year at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Over the past several years, he has worked to combine his spiritual and musical passions by composing devotional songs that draw on his favorite musical traditions. Those include Indian raga, North African rhythms and forms of chanting, as well as the Grateful Dead and Aretha Franklin. For lyrics, he turned to Torah and other religious texts. For collaborators, he turned to musicians whose work, like his, isn’t easily categorized. Perhaps most surprising is his singer Alsarah, a Muslim woman who grew up in Sudan and Yemen, went to Wesleyan University, and now leads the band Alsarah and the Nubatones from her base in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Together, the 10-person band, which is called the Epichorus, is releasing their first album, One Bead, available here at the end of this week. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry talks with Zach Fredman and Alsarah in Fredman’s Harlem apartment about their musical influences, what they’re trying to accomplish with this project, and how they owe their collaboration, at least in part, to a late night YouTube bender. [Running time: 21:54.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

When Theodore Ross moved with his newly divorced mother and brother to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi at age 9, the family pretended not to be Jewish. This deceit was his mother’s idea, and years later it led Ted to question whether he should consider himself a Jew at all, having been discouraged from embracing any religious identification as a young person. In recent years, the desire to answer that question led him to seek out other Jews who are outliers in some way, from crypto-Jews in the Southwest, to the “lost tribe” Ethiopian Jews now resettled in Israel, to ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn who welcome him into their homes for Shabbat. Ross writes about these journeys in Am I a Jew? Lost Tribes, Lapsed Jews, and One Man’s Search for Himself. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about why his mother demanded that he hide his religious identity, what it was like pretending not to be entirely himself, and why he chose to spend time with non-mainstream Jews as a way to re-engage with what being Jewish might mean for him. [Running time: 18:50.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Originally from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, and now based in and around Tel Aviv, the Alaev Family includes three generations of musicians. They’re led by Allo Alaev, the family patriarch, who’s now 80 and who spent 50 years as a percussionist with the Folk Opera of Dushanbe. These days he leads the seven-person family ensemble, which includes his sons and grandchildren. Together, they update traditional Jewish and Central Asian folk songs to create a propulsive and almost ecstatic new sound. This month, the Alaevs concluded a world tour with a gig at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival. They also have a new CD, produced with Tamir Muskat, the drummer of the high-energy dance band Balkan Beat Box. And, come fall, they’ll be hitting the road once again, bringing their singular sound to the Netherlands and South Africa. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry met most of the Alaev family in their midtown Manhattan hotel just days before their Lincoln Center performance. They spoke about how they came by their musical talent and about the origins of the songs they perform. And, periodically, they broke into spontaneous song. [Running time: 15:30.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

David Rakoff, a contributor to our site, died Aug. 9, 2012, after a battle with cancer. He was 47. Some years ago, Rakoff wrote an essay on the life and work of Viennese writer Felix Salten. The creator of Bambi, Salten was a European Jew who wrote soft porn and a prominent critic in early 20th-century Austria. In concert with this essay, Rakoff joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry for a podcast conversation about the brutality in Bambi, about Salten’s place in literary society, and about the dark side of fairy tales—and life. We re-run this piece now to celebrate David Rakoff, whose wit, warmth, and grace come across in every utterance, and whose reading of a particularly wrenching scene from Bambi gives a sense both of the work’s violence and of Rakoff’s own captivating voice. [Running time: 19:12.] Your browser does not support the audio element. May his memory be for a blessing.

Most of us would just as soon avoid airports, with their long lines and testy patrons. But Betty Sussman thrives there. She is one of approximately 90 volunteers who work a four-hour shift each week at the Palm Beach International Airport, greeting visitors as “airport ambassadors.” Sussman (who turns 81 this month) is not your typical South Floridian. She is still employed; four days a week she works as an office manager for an ophthalmologist. For her, being an airport ambassador eases some of the loneliness she experiences during the weekend—time she used to spend with her husband before he died six years ago. Plus there are perks: She makes good use of the meal voucher she earns each shift, redeemable at any of the airport’s concessions. Miami-based radio producer Trina Sargalski trailed Betty on one of her Sunday-morning shifts and sent us this dispatch. This segment, from our archive, first ran on June 27, 2011. [Running time: 7:05.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Doreen Carvajal was raised Catholic and had no occasion to question her religious or cultural heritage growing up. Even when she became a journalist (she’s currently a European correspondent for the New York Times and International Herald Tribune) and readers, seeing her byline, wrote to tell her that her last name was a common Sephardic Jewish name, she remained incurious. It took moving to Arcos de la Frontera, an ancient town in Andalusia, Spain, for her to finally confront the likelihood that her ancestors were conversos—that is, Spanish Jews who 600 years ago converted to Christianity rather than face death or exile during the Inquisition. In a new memoir, The Forgetting River, Carvajal describes her search for definitive answers to questions about her identity. That search took her to Costa Rica, university archives and genetic specialists, frontier towns in Spain, and her own cache of forgotten memories and keepsakes. She speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about what she found out. [Running time: 17:30.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

With the start of the Summer Olympics just days away, the International Olympic Committee remains firm in its insistence that there will be no commemoration marking the tragedy that took place 40 years ago, at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. It was there that 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage and then murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. A German police officer and five of the hostage-takers also died in the standoff. The United States, Germany, Australia, and Israel have called for a public remembrance at this summer’s games in London. Their efforts have been for naught. The IOC says it does not want to “politicize” the event with a memorial service even while international pressure—including from President Obama—to hold such a commemoration mounts. David Clay Large is a historian of modern Germany who has written about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Munich under Nazi rule, and, most recently, about the 1972 Olympic Games. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss what role Germany’s and Israel’s national identity played in the events leading up to the 1972 massacre, how the event is remembered in Germany and Israel today, and why the IOC is disingenuous in its refusal to have a memorial service this summer. [Running time: 22:00.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Many people think of Islam, or religion generally, as disempowering for girls and women. The Light in Her Eyes, a documentary by Laura Nix and Julia Meltzer, challenges that notion. It follows Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim, wife, mother, preacher, and founder of a girls’ religious school in Damascus. In observing al-Habash, her children, students, and colleagues at school, at home, in shopping malls, and at outdoor cafés, the film explores how modernity and Muslim faith co-exist, challenging many Western assumptions that such co-existence is a fallacy. Meltzer and Nix join Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about the difficulties they had filming as American women—one Jewish, one Christian—in Syria and about their audiences’ reactions to the seemingly contradictory values and aspirations expressed by al-Habash and her students. The Light in Her Eyes airs on the PBS series “POV” on July 19, 2012, and streams online from July 20 through Aug. 19. You can also see a clip from the film here. [Running time: 18:27.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

In a fortnight, millions of TV viewers will tune in to watch world-class athletes perform acts of great strength and endurance. But a few generations back, at the turn of the last century, long before the Olympic Games became the outsized spectacle that they are today, audiences looking to be entertained by athletic prowess were more likely to find it at the fairgrounds, on a vaudeville stage, or along the boardwalk. That’s where strongmen could be found, pulling trucks with their hair or splitting nails with their teeth. One of the greatest strongmen of all time was one Joseph Greenstein, born Yossele in 1893 in the small Polish town of Suvalk. At a young age, Greenstein ran away to join a Russian circus, then made his way to the Texas oil fields, and finally to Brooklyn, where, as the Mighty Atom, he would earn a place in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and the Guinness Book of World Records for his extraordinary feats (for instance, in 1928, resisting the pull of a plane with a 220 horsepower using ropes tied to his long hair). The Mighty Atom died in 1977, at age 84. Reporter Jon Kalish presents this profile of him, drawing on archival interviews as well as conversations with his protégés and with his son Mike Greenstein, now 91. [Running time: 12:51.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Over the past few years, Israel has seen a dramatic increase in immigration—not of Jews, but of migrants from African nations like Eritrea, Sudan, and Ivory Coast. According to some estimates, there are now approximately 60,000 African migrants living in Israel, and their presence has given rise to tensions, particularly in the poor Tel Aviv neighborhoods where many of them have settled. Now the government has embarked on a crackdown—not the first but certainly the toughest so far—deporting hundreds of migrants from South Sudan, which it says is safe enough for them to return to. Migrants from Ivory Coast are up next: This past Thursday, the government announced they have two weeks to leave voluntarily. Israeli officials argue that the deportations are necessary because the migrants are a burden and a threat to the country’s Jewish majority. Critics say the policy violates human rights, not to mention Jewish values. Itamar Mann has worked directly with Israel’s African migrants as a co-founder of We Are Refugees, an organization providing pro bono counsel to asylum-seekers in Israel. But he also views immigrant questions from a wider perspective. Mann is a lawyer and a doctoral student at Yale University studying the history of refugee policies in Europe, the United States, and Australia. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry speaks with Mann about the underlying causes of, and possible solutions to, Israel’s immigrant situation. [Running time: 16:44.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

According to the Torah, homosexuality is forbidden. That injunction is what makes Rabbi Zuckerman, a frail old man, recoil when he learns that a new friend, a twentysomething named Benji Steiner, is gay. These characters and their relationship anchor a new novel, Sweet Like Sugar, by Wayne Hoffman. It’s a story that takes on identity, personal secrets, and the search for connection. The novel is something of a departure for Hoffman, whose debut, Hard, took a much more explicit look at gay life, describing the personal and political engagement of a group of gay men in the late 1990s in Greenwich Village. Hoffman, the managing editor of Tablet Magazine, will accept the prestigious Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award at the annual American Library Association conference today. To celebrate his accomplishment, we re-present his conversation with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry. They discuss Sweet Like Sugar, how his two careers—novelist and editor—influence one another, and his own experience finding acceptance as a gay Jew. [Running time: 16:54.] Your browser does not support the audio element. This podcast was originally published on Aug. 17, 2011.

In the 1970s, Aline Kominsky-Crumb pioneered a let-it-all-hang-out style of autobiographical comics. Her influence continues to this day, in the work of graphic novelists like Allison Bechdel or, perhaps more aptly, filmmaker Lena Dunham, creator and star of the much-discussed HBO series Girls. Kominsky-Crumb’s other claim to fame is her husband, R. Crumb, the macher of underground comics. The Crumbs have been living in a village in France for the past two decades, collaborating and pursuing their own independent projects. Now Kominsky-Crumb has a show opening at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York. The exhibit documents, with drawings and video, a trip she and fellow artist Dominique Sapel took to Miami—not as tourists, but as participant-observers of the local culture. More specifically, they went there to get makeovers from Cookie Rosen, Kominsky-Crumb’s mother’s beautician. Then they hit the street to see how it felt to be made up, blown out, and lifted. On a recent afternoon, Kominsky-Crumb gave independent producer Eric Molinsky a tour of the upcoming exhibit. [Running time: 8:22.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

The former Ohel Moshe Synagogue in the northern Hongkou District of Shanghai was once the spiritual home of European Jews taking refuge during World War II. Most of those 20,000 refugees moved on after the war and the establishment of Communist China. These days, the synagogue forms part of the Jewish Refugees Museum; it’s sparsely furnished and usually quiet. (An exhibit on the community opens later this month in New York City.) For a few weeks this past spring that changed, as the synagogue’s prayer hall was transformed into a wartime café, in which was set a historical drama called North Bank Suzhou Creek. (The play has since had a three-night run in New York City, and there are plans in the works for additional performances.) The production, a love story full of musical numbers, is by Chinese playwright William Sun and was co-directed by Michael Leibenluft and Jeffrey Sichel, both American. The six-person cast was a mix of French, British, Chinese, and American performers. Shanghai-based reporter Rebecca Kanthor visited the set during rehearsals and sold-out performances and talked to the actors and directors about the pleasures and pains of putting on a bilingual, bi-cultural production of this kind. [Running time: 7:51.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

By day, Chris Silver works for a Jewish task force trying to raise awareness about civic inequalities facing Israel’s Arab citizens. But he dedicates his free time to Jews in an Arab land, with his blog, Jewish Morocco. Silver created the blog in 2008, while traveling in Morocco, as a way of sharing the stories, photographs, and other artifacts he was collecting to document what Jewish life there had been like in its heyday. Along the way, he developed a particular interest in the country’s Jewish musicians and singers—characters who were beloved by Moroccans of all backgrounds, and to whom he gives ample space on his blog. Silver joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about some of the unique voices he’s discovered, what happened to Jewish Moroccan singers once they left the country in the 1950s and ’60s, and where he gets his missionary zeal (hint: It has to do with Bob Dylan; Mama Cass; Bill Cosby; and Chris’s dad, Roy). [Running time: 25:55.] Your browser does not support the audio element. *** Like this article? Sign up for our Daily Digest to get Tablet Magazine’s new content in your inbox each morning.