Vox Tablet

Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, the latest album from the jazz-metal band Pitom, has a title that makes explicit reference to the vidui, or confession—one of Yom Kippur’s central prayers. The vidui is a recitation of the many ways in which we sin—by robbery, by lying, by blasphemy. But while the album may flirt with sin in its raucous approach, it comes from a place of devotion. Yoshie Fruchter, the leader of Pitom, is the son and grandson of cantors, and professes an abiding love for the traditional melodies sung on Yom Kippur. The songs on the album, which was released by John Zorn’s Tzadik label, are meant to invoke the intense emotions that accompany the holiday’s centuries-old prayers. The result is rich, loud, and cathartic. For Vox Tablet, Fruchter and Jeremy Brown, Pitom’s violinist, played a stripped-down version of the track “Neilah,” and they explained to host Sara Ivry why a jazz-metal-rock take on the Day of Atonement seemed like a good idea. [Running time: 15:09.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Like Isaac Bashevis Singer, his fellow Yiddish writer, Chaim Grade (his last name is pronounced GRAH-duh) fled the Russian Empire and settled in New York, where he established himself as a major figure in the literary world. But while Singer’s fame flourished in America, Grade’s reach grew more limited. After Grade died in 1982, scholars, translators, and publishers tried to acquire his unpublished works for posthumous publication but were stymied by Grade’s widow. Fiercely protective of her husband’s legacy, Inna Grade rebuffed nearly all who approached her. Meanwhile, the Grade apartment in the Bronx would become an impassable and grimy shrine to her husband’s papers and books. Inna Grade died last year. In the ensuing months, Yiddishists have thrilled to the possibility that they will finally gain access to her husband’s extensive archive and perhaps come upon an unpublished gem of a manuscript. For now, though, the hunt is on hold, as the public administrator of the Bronx has yet to determine which of six competing institutions will inherit Grade’s papers. Meanwhile, the archive is in the provisional custody of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the reasons for Chaim Grade’s relative obscurity, the ghosts lurking in the volumes he left behind, and his towering significance as a writer—Grade is to Vilna, Brent says, as William Faulkner is to the American South. [Running time: 26:21.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Nathan Thrall, a Middle East analyst for the International Crisis Group, is also a reporter, and since 2006 he’s been filing stories from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza for publications including the New York Review of Books (and Tablet Magazine). He recently spoke to Tablet Magazine contributing editor Adam Chandler about what he thinks will happen in the West Bank and Gaza following the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations this week. His recent conversations with Palestinians in the region, he told Chandler, have revealed a population inured to false hopes and accordingly far less exercised about the planned Security Council move than their Israeli counterparts. [Running time: 18:30.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Editor’s note: Lucette Lagnado died this week at 62. She spoke with Vox Tablet in 2011. — In her best-selling memoir, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, journalist Lucette Lagnado brought to life the multiethnic metropolis of Cairo in the 1940s and 1950s. Lagnado’s father, Leon, a debonair man-about-town, thrived in that cosmopolitan world, and young Lucette basked in his glow. But Egypt’s 1952 revolution changed all that. The family held on for a time, finally immigrating to the United States in 1962, and Lagnado’s book—winner of the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature—arrestingly described her father’s steady decline. Now she has written a second memoir, The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, that offers a loving and often devastating portrait of her mother and all that she sacrificed to keep her family intact, both in Egypt and in the United States. It also delves into Lagnado’s own painful experiences growing up, first as the daughter of protective Egyptian parents trying to find her way in 1960s America, then as a critically ill teenager (she was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma at 16 and spent the better part of a year undergoing radiation treatments), and, finally, as a young journalist making her way in the world. Lagnado spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the high price of American assimilation, the difficulties of writing this book, and the ties that have bonded mothers and daughters in her family together across generations. [Running time: 25:16.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Bruce Jay Friedman has been writing across genres and media for more than half a century. Literary types remember Stern, his 1962 breakout book, referred to by one critic as “the first Freudian novel.” Movie buffs know him as the screenwriter of blockbusters like Splash and Stir Crazy. The film The Heartbreak Kid was based on his short story “A Change of Plan.” And then there were his several plays, including the popular 1970 Steambath. Now Friedman has written Lucky Bruce, a memoir that takes readers from his Depression-era childhood in the Bronx to his time in Hollywood, with stops along the way at Elaine’s and other literati hangouts. He recalls his long friendships with Mario Puzo and Joseph Heller and recounts amusing run-ins with Norman Mailer, Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, and many others, all with his famous dark humor. His passion for writing, and admiration for those who do it well, is ever present. (You can read an excerpt from Lucky Bruce here.) Tablet Magazine’s Ellen Umansky spoke to Friedman—or BJF, as he’s known to many—about his storied career. [Running time: 21:46.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Serge Gainsbourg was, depending on whom you ask, a brilliant songwriter, a buffoon, an outrage, a Don Juan, or the definition of French cool. To French comic book artist Joann Sfar, growing up in a strait-laced observant family in the 1970s, Gainsbourg—born Lucien Ginsberg in 1928—was a hero. Sfar was enthralled by Gainsbourg’s outrageous antics on French television, his unabashed romps with knockouts like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, and his reckless smoking and drinking, not to mention his talent as a singer and songwriter. All this from a skinny Jewish guy with protruding ears and a big nose. Gainsbourg was a mostly washed-up artist when he died at 62 of a heart attack, in 1991. But that’s not what Sfar wishes to remember in his first feature film, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, which opens next week in the United States. Rather, Sfar revels in Gainsbourg’s crash-and-burn approach to life as an outsider, from his cavalier embrace of the yellow star in 1941 to his 1978 recording of a reggae remix of the French national anthem. The film takes creative license with Gainsbourg’s life, just as Gainsbourg was prone to do, and includes some of Sfar’s favorite things: puppets, caricature, Jewish themes, and sex. Vox Tablet’s Sara Ivry spoke to Sfar about Gainsbourg’s life, his love-hate relationships with France and with Jews, and Sfar’s own provocations as an artist and filmmaker. [Running time: 19:07.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Ever since his service in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israeli Yuval Neria has been interested in the impact of extreme trauma on mental health. He became an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder and was recruited to Columbia University’s department of clinical psychology shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, he has been working with and studying those most directly affected by the events in New York City: friends and family of those who were killed in the World Trade Center, and the first responders who worked in the wreckage. On the eve of Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples and other catastrophic events in Jewish history, Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry spoke to Neria about his own wartime experiences and what his research has taught him about treating trauma. Neria was awarded a Medal of Valor for his service, and in 1986 he published the novel Esh, Hebrew for “fire,” a fictionalized account of his time in combat. He and Ivry discussed the psychological benefits and risks of revisiting traumatic events year after year, as Jews do with the ritual reading of the Book of Lamentations. [Running time: 20:00.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

In an old joke, a Frenchman, a German, and a Jew walk into a bar. “I’m tired and thirsty,” says the Frenchman. “I must have wine.” “I’m tired and thirsty,” says the German. “I must have some beer.” “I’m tired and thirsty,” says the Jew. “I must have diabetes.” Hypochondria is a staple of Jewish humor, but the neurotic disorder is by no means the exclusive domain of Jews, nor is it necessarily funny. Those who suffer from it are consumed by anxiety over the imagined progression of illness in their bodies and obsessively take note of symptoms real or imagined. It disrupts work and family life. And it taxes the healthcare system, as hypochondriacs seek second, third, fourth, and fifth opinions and demand test after test. This week Vox Tablet presents the radio documentary “Living With Hypochondria: The Real Costs of Imagined Illness,” written and produced by Karen Brown and first aired on WFCR in New England. It takes an in-depth look at the disorder, from the perspective of those who suffer from it to clinicians studying its impact on individuals, families, and society. [Running time: 28:01.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

When performer and memoirist Janice Erlbaum was a young teenager, she had a crush on a boy from school. He invited her to his bar mitzvah, an event that was also to be attended by the gaggle of girls who had recently turned on Janice, publicly declaring her a misfit. Janice was thrilled to be there, but as the afternoon unfolded, her allegiance to the boy was to be pitted against her desire to gain re-entry to the in crowd. She tells the story of what happened on that fateful day. Janice Erlbaum is the author of Girlbomb and Have You Found Her. You can find more of her stories here. [Running time:10:20.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

For most women, diamonds prompt reveries of fairytale engagements, or at least daydreams of Marilyn Monroe. For journalist Alicia Oltuski, they connote family. Her paternal grandfather was a diamond dealer; he once traded a single stone for condensed milk, marmalade, and honey when he was a displaced person in Germany just after World War II. Oltuski’s father also dealt in gems—buying and selling antique jewelry on West 47th Street, the heart of New York City’s diamond district. In her new book, Precious Objects: A Story of Diamonds, Family, and a Way of Life, Oltuski examines the jewelry trade and some of the characters who work in it. She joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss Jewish predominance in the diamond business, her family’s relationship with the industry, and how the gems now represent polar positions—romance and conflict—in popular culture. [Running time: 18:26.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

The inaugural class of fellows at the American Academy in Jerusalem was announced last month by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, which will host the four selected American artists while they develop new work in the dynamically, culturally rich city. The project is the brainchild of Elise Bernhardt, the foundation’s president, who modeled it on the American Academies in Rome and Berlin (each is a separate entity, with no formal ties). The American Academy in Jerusalem, a nine-week residency, also aims to strengthen ties between artists and cultural institutions in the United States and Israel. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry talked about the program with Bernhardt, discussing how the fellows were selected and whether Jerusalem can compete with European cities as a cultural capital. Ivry also spoke to the four fellows, who are headed to Jerusalem in October: urban planner David Karnovsky, visual artist Lynne Avadenka, theater director David Herskovits, and choreographer Donald Byrd. [Running time: 20:43.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Oxford doctoral candidate Rebecca Steinfeld argues in Tablet Magazine today that granting Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the right to conjugal visits and by extension the right to father a child is consistent with the state’s pro-natalist policies. Steinfeld is writing a dissertation on the topic, War of the Wombs: The History and Politics of Fertility Policies in Israel, 1948-2010. She spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the evolution of these policies, from cash “birth prizes” awarded to mothers on the birth of their 10th child in the early days of the state to today’s heavily subsidized fertility procedures for women who wish to conceive, and about accusations that these policies have favored Jewish citizens over others. [Running time: 17:29.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Tablet Magazine recently moved its offices to a stretch of West 28th Street in Manhattan. The new digs are in an auspicious location—the block that was once Tin Pan Alley, the historic district where George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and many others went to play piano and peddle songs to music publishers. As the 20th century reached its midpoint, tunesmiths moved elsewhere. (The Brill Building, famously home to later generations of songwriters, is just north of Times Square.) Old buildings came down while new ones went up, and our portion of West 28th is now a bustling commercial hodge-podge bookended by the flower district to the west and the perfume district to the east. To learn more about our new neighborhood—where Emma Goldman founded her anarchist magazine, too, and Zero Mostel had a painting studio—Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry spoke to Jim Mackin, a New York City historian and tour guide, about West 28th Street, how specialized commercial districts come into being, and Irving Berlin’s first big hit. [Running time: 16:17.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

The holiday of Shavuot brings with it unique forms of observance. In addition to the consumption of dairy-rich delicacies, many people participate in a tikkun layl Shavuot, an all-night study session. During a tikkun, it’s traditional to peruse and discuss a portion from the Bible, the Talmud, or the Mishneh. To mark Shavuot this year, Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry asked novelist Nathan Englander, musician Alicia Jo Rabins, Rabbi Phil Lieberman, and theologian Avivah Zornberg what text they’d most like to think about in the early-morning hours, and what makes those hours particularly well-suited to explorations of the mind and spirit. [Running time: 11:40] Your browser does not support the audio element.

In the early 1900s, Puerto Barrios, in Guatemala, was on the cusp of becoming a thriving Caribbean port town. It was the bustling terminus for trains hauling produce for the United Fruit Company. From there, bananas were shipped north to the port of New Orleans and, thereafter, to destinations all over the United States. By the late 1930s, things had changed dramatically. Puerto Barrios’ indigenous charms had been all but eradicated, replaced by filth and destitution. It was inhabited mostly by Afro-Guatemalans and West Indians who worked on the docks for pitiful wages; those with means were advised to get out of town as fast as they could. It is here that we meet Samuel Berkow, the well-to-do German Jewish bachelor at the center of The Price of Escape, a new novel by David Unger. Berkow arrives in Guatemala from Hamburg, where the Nazi noose had begun to tighten around him. Berkow expects his arrival to mark the beginning of a new and exciting life. Instead, in just three days, Puerto Barrios—with its demons, drunks, and thugs—nearly finishes him off. Unger, a Guatemala-born, Brooklyn-based writer, speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the relationship of Samuel Berkow’s history to his own, about the appeal of creating only semi-sympathetic protagonists, and about why most of his relatives refuse to read his work. [Running time: 15:16]. Your browser does not support the audio element.