Vox Tablet

Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is a highly educated stay-at-home mom living in an airy modern home in the affluent L.A. neighborhood of Silver Lake. She volunteers for fundraisers at the JCC. She goes to wine-and-chats with the ladies. She works out and sees her therapist regularly. But she’s bored, she can’t get it up for her husband, and she’s starting to freak out. Enter McKenna (Juno Temple), a stripper who gives her a lap dance and whom Rachel then decides to “save,” by inviting her to move into her home. This is the premise of Jill Soloway’s debut feature film Afternoon Delight, which is partly a comedy but also an affecting look at what happens when lust settles into marriage and parenthood. Soloway is best known as a TV writer and producer for shows like Six Feet Under and United States of Tara. She won the Directing Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for Afternoon Delight, which opens in theaters Aug. 30. On Vox Tablet, she speaks with guest host Rebecca Soffer, a New York-based producer and writer, about what led her to make a movie about a mom and a hooker; how she got such poignant performances from a cast of comedians; and the role Jewish ritual plays in the story and in her own life.

The dog days of August are upon us and with them, a marked slowdown in productivity. Nobody answers our calls, hardly anyone responds to emails, and those of us in the office find ourselves fantasizing about drinking icy beverages in faraway locales. Which got us wondering: What are people in Jerusalem drinking these days? Has the Holy City picked up on the craft cocktail movement currently holding sway throughout the Diaspora? And what drink best captures the life and spirit of the city? We sent Daniel Estrin to investigate. Happy to oblige, he criss-crossed the city, making stops at three bars—HaSadna in Talpiot, the American Colony in East Jerusalem, and Shuka in Mahane Yehuda—to find out what special drinks the bartenders are serving this season and who’s drinking them. Along the way, he met some great characters, sipped some delicious concoctions (recipes included), and—yes—got drunk. [Running time: 17:43.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

In 2011, adventure-seeking rock drummer-turned-Hasidic mother of four Dalia Shusterman became a widow. At about the same time, Perl Wolfe, born and raised in the Lubavitch sect of Hasidism, married and divorced, was living with her parents and beginning to write her own music. A few months later, the two women would meet in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and soon after that, begin recording their first EP, titled “Down to the Top.” Their band name, Bulletproof Stockings—a somewhat derogatory term used to refer to the opaque stockings worn by some Orthodox women—hints at their insider status as Hasidic women, and also at a kind of freedom or irreverence they bring to their enterprise. Bulletproof Stockings, which also includes cellist Elisheva Maistser, performs for women only, in keeping with kol isha, the prohibition on men hearing women sing that is adhered to among Orthodox Jews. They also dress modestly, as is customary in the Lubavitch community to which they belong. But when playing music, they are not contained. They can be loud and raucous and sooner find common ground with the likes of Jane’s Addiction or the Throwing Muses than with Keren Ann. For that, they’ve attracted attention well beyond their Crown Heights enclave. Here they talk with Vox Tablet’s Sara Ivry about their musical backgrounds, about ways their faith gets expressed in their music, and about why it’s so important for women to have opportunities to rock out without any guys around. [Running time: 24:46.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

David Ehrlich is best known as the founder of Tmol Shilshom, a bookstore café in the heart of Jerusalem that has long been a popular gathering place for writers and artists. It’s named after the novel by S. Y. Agnon and has hosted readings by the leading lights of Israeli literature, from Yehuda Amichai to David Grossman, as well as renowned writers from abroad. Ehrlich is himself a writer, primarily of essays and short stories. Now Syracuse University Press has published Who Will Die Last: Stories of Life in Israel, the first collection of his stories to be translated into English. In today’s podcast, we invited Brooklyn novelist and performer John Haskell to read Ehrlich’s “The Store,” an eerily calm accounting of a horrific chapter in the life of an insular Israeli village. “The Store” was first published in English by Whereabouts Press, in a collection titled Israel: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. [Running time: 15:13.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Yesterday’s sentencing of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was just the latest in a steady stream of blows to the democracy that President Vladimir Putin has ruled with near-dictatorial authority for more than a decade. Navalny, an anticorruption activist, was given a 5-year prison sentence for what most observers say are trumped up charges of embezzlement. If you know anything about Navalny, or about Pussy Riot, or about new laws in Russia that erode freedom of speech, punish gays and lesbians, and intimidate nongovernmental organizations, there’s a good chance you’ve read the work of Masha Gessen, Miriam Elder, or Michael Idov. Gessen is the author of, most recently, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (as well as an upcoming book for Tablet’s sister organization’s Jewish Encounters series), and a regular contributor to the New York Times. Elder is on her last days as Moscow bureau chief for the Guardian (she is moving to Buzzfeed later this month, where she’ll be the site’s foreign editor). Idov is editor in chief of Russia GQ. All three are children of Soviet refuseniks and have dedicated the past few years (or, in Gessen’s case, the past two decades) of their journalistic careers to understanding what’s happening in Russia and to making that place comprehensible to the rest of us. Reporters of similar backgrounds have come before them (New Yorker and Tablet Magazine contributor Julia Ioffe among them), but they are the few holdouts. As the picture from there turns grimmer, and in light of their parents’ experiences, one has to wonder how much longer they’ll stick around. In today’s Vox Tablet, contributor Julia Barton speaks to each of them about why they’ve chosen to live and work in the place from which their parents fled, what they want their readers to understand about life and politics in Russia, and what sort of future they see there, for themselves and for the country. [Running time: 14:00.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Nearly 120 years after the Dreyfus Affair shook the world, you would think we know all there is to know about the seminal case involving a French Jewish officer falsely accused of treason. Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty and deported to prison on a small, remote island, and it was only after his family, joined by leading intellectuals of the time, rallied in protest that he was acquitted, his case becoming a cornerstone of the democratic French republic. A flood of books on the topic followed, from Emile Zola’s J’Accuse onward. Yet French historians showed remarkably little interest when, a few years ago, the French army made available parts of its archive that include the notorious secret dossier that had been used to indict the Jewish captain. The file sheds light not only on the case itself but also on the complex web of personalities, institutions, and societal attitudes that surrounded it. All these details might have remained in the shadows were it not for the dogged work of French historian Pierre Gervais. Gervais is the co-author of a recent book, available in French only, about the secret file. On today’s podcast, from his apartment in Paris, Gervais speaks with Tablet Magazine’s Liel Leibovitz about his discoveries. Leibovitz has also written a book on these latest revelations about the Dreyfus Affair; it’s just out as an Amazon Kindle Single published by Tablet Magazine. [Running time: 19:50.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Questions of character shape public discourse. From Paula Deen to Edward Snowden—the choices people make and actions people take raise questions about free will, personal responsibility, and morality. And yet, researchers in sociology, psychology, and neuroscience are increasingly asserting that the independent self that we are all so attached to doesn’t really exist. What’s more, there are philosophical traditions dating back to Aristotle, Maimonides, and Spinoza that may offer more useful ways of thinking about how to foster ethical behavior and moral societies. In The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will, Heidi Ravven, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, examines these questions. She joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry on the podcast to discuss how the myth of free will took hold, what Spinoza had to say about it, and why if you want to be a moral person, the last thing you should do is surround yourself with like-minded people. [Running time: 24:52.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Sheldon Horowitz is a retired watch repairman and wise-cracker from New York City and a Korean War veteran relocated to Oslo, where he lives with his granddaughter and her Norwegian husband. In mourning over the recent death of his wife, Sheldon is in near constant anguish too over the loss years before of his only son—killed in Vietnam. That loss causes him to question continually the virtue of the patriotism and sense of civic responsibility that defined him and that he imparted to his child. When his Serbian immigrant neighbor is killed, Sheldon is forced to confront what is going on around him in the present and takes it upon himself to ferry his neighbor’s young child to safety. But what safety is and how to get there is unclear. Derek B. Miller’s debut novel Norwegian by Night is a literary thriller that explores grief, memory, aging, and identity as it follows Horowitz and the boy from Oslo to the countryside. Though heady, the novel is also funny, laced with sardonic wit. Based in Oslo, where he directs the Policy Lab and works as a specialist in international affairs, Miller speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about his affection for Sheldon and the “greatest generation,” about Norway’s small Jewish population, and about why his crime novel is not really, or only, a crime novel. [Running time: 19:42.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

What are the three words a woman never wants to hear when she’s making love? Honey, I’m home. Whether their circumstances are happy or fraught, Jews have been pointing out the humor in their predicaments since the biblical era, when Sarah the matriarch saw the fact that she’d bear a child at her advanced age as a cruel joke. But it was only since the Enlightenment that, as a people, the Jews became known as a witty lot—reveling in word play, contradiction, and self-deprecation. Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse loves a good punchline (and, with her grandmotherly comportment, has perfected the straight-man delivery) but rejects the idea that Jewish humor is a uniform thing and, furthermore, that it’s something of which to be proud. In No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, Wisse considers the variations of humor from Heinrich Heine to YouTube. She joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to share some gallows humor, to compare the jokes of the Haskalah to those told in yeshivas, and to argue that engaging in humor that distracts us from suffering, rather than confronting it, is not worth the laughs. [Running time: 32:16.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

In his debut novel, The Path of Names, Vancouver-based writer Ari Goelman conjures Dahlia, an intrepid 13-year-old who we meet as she begrudgingly attends her first summer at Camp Arava, the Jewish overnight camp where her brother is a beloved counselor. Ever interested in figuring out sleights of hand, she’d rather spend her time learning magic. Then strange things start to happen. Dahlia spots two apparitions—little girls dressed for the 1940s who beckon to her in her bunk. Suddenly she has memories and dreams of yeshiva life and understands Hebrew words she has never before known. Unruffled by the increasingly intense fantastical phenomena around her, Dahlia forges on, keen to figure out what’s happening to her and to the sweet ghosts who keep reappearing. Ari Goelman talks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the fantasy novels that accompanied his childhood, how he came up with the idea for Dahlia and her story, and why he set the action at a Jewish overnight camp. Joining the conversation is Josie Ingall, herself a lover of fantasy fiction, who, at 11 years old, fits right in to Goelman’s target demographic and has some questions of her own to put to the author. (Josie is also the daughter of Tablet Magazine columnist Marjorie Ingall.) Though the school year is ending, there’s no reason for you or your child to stop reading! Enter our sweepstakes to be one of 10 lucky people selected at random to win a copy of The Path of Names. [Running time: 12:44.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Joshua Prager is a reporter best known for tracking down elusive characters whose lives were altered in an instant—people like Tehran-based photographer Jahangir Razmi, the only anonymous winner of a Pulitzer Prize, and Albert Clark, who was unexpectedly bequeathed the royalties of the wildly popular children’s books Goodnight, Moon, Runaway Bunny, and other titles by Margaret Wise Brown. Now Prager has written Half-Life, the story of how his own life changed in an instant. When he was 19 and spending the year studying at a yeshiva in Israel, he was a passenger on a minibus headed to Jerusalem that was struck by a speeding truck. Prager’s neck was broken, and he nearly died. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry talks with Prager about how the accident altered the course he’d thought his life would follow, how his disability makes people trust him and confide long-held secrets, and about his belief that physical injury, even one as devastating as his, is easier to overcome than the invisible suffering most people carry around within them. [Running time: 29:01.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Berlin has long had an anti-capitalist bent, part of its countercultural charm. But before the war, it was a more enterprising and bustling place, due in no small part to the nearly 50,000 Jewish-owned businesses located there. What happened to those businesses under Hitler is at the core of meticulous research by Humboldt University historian Christoph Kreutzmüller. While most of us are familiar with images of Nazi boycotts and smashed storefront windows, Kreutzmüller and his research team have assembled less familiar details about the escalating campaign of violence and administrative harassment that led to the demise of Jewish enterprises and, ultimately, the demise of the idea of Berlin as a center of industry and commerce. Kreutzmüller’s findings were on display earlier this month in an exhibit at the Berlin Chamber of Commerce as part of the city’s yearlong reckoning with the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. They can also be found (in German) in his new book, Final Sale: The End of Jewish Owned Businesses in Nazi Berlin, and in an online database of thousands of companies that used to exist in the city. Reporter Brian Zumhagen visited Kreutzmüller in Berlin to talk with him about his research and to visit several sites where Berlin’s forgotten Jewish enterprises once stood. [Correction: Christoph Kreutzmüller is currently a researcher and educator at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, and not, as stated in the piece, a professor at Humboldt University of Berlin.] [Running time: 13:28.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

B&H Restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village was once part of a neighborhood that vibrated with Jewishness. Yiddish theaters peppered the area. Ratner’s was down the street, and the 2nd Avenue Deli was just across the way. Opened in 1942, the dairy-only B&H has outlasted most of these joints—sure, the 2nd Avenue Deli remains but in a new location and not even on 2nd Avenue—with its blintz and pierogi offerings gobbled up by hungry customers in a classic, narrow diner space brightened by lime green walls. Little has changed on B&H’s menu. So says Eve Jochnowitz, a lifelong Greenwich Village resident, Yiddish scholar, and Jewish culinary ethnographer, who has just finished translating and editing a 1930 Yiddish cookbook by Vilna restaurateur Fania Lewando. In anticipation of Shavuot, for which many of us indulge in cheesecake and other dairy delights, Jochnowitz joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry for a visit to B&H to talk about the history of dairy restaurants, their forgotten cousin the “appetizing store,” and the unexpected pleasure of a soup made with pickles. Jochnowitz also offers her favorite vegan alternative to the cheesecake. [Running time: 15:00.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

In 1930s Warsaw, a young beauty named Vera Gran made a name for herself as a seductive and charming cabaret singer with a voice fans likened to Edith Piaf’s and Marlene Dietrich’s. Gran (born Grynberg) was, along with her mother and sisters and thousands of other Jews, forced to live inside the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. During her time in the ghetto, she continued performing until she managed, with the help of her Polish husband, to escape its confines and go into hiding in 1942. Her family perished. As devastating as that loss was, Gran’s nightmare took a harrowing new turn after the war, when she was suddenly accused by other survivors—including her accompanist, the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman—of having collaborated with the Gestapo. Her story captivated the Polish writer Agata Tuszyńska, who was born after the war but whose own mother and grandmother struggled to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto and who feels still the effects of that confinement in her own life. Tuszyńska, in New York as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, made Gran’s acquaintance in Paris, when Gran was old and bitter and ever suspicious. Tuszyńska’s new book is Vera Gran: The Accused, and she talks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about how she convinced the paranoid old woman to talk to her, about the nature of the accusations made against Gran, and about the slow process of discovery that has followed from Tuszyńska’s learning, at age 19, that her mother was a Jew. [Running time: 33:38.] Your browser does not support the audio element.

Last week, the Society of Professional Journalists named Tablet contributor Daniel Estrin a Sigma Delta Chi Award honoree for his 2012 Vox Tablet report about a new light-rail system in Jerusalem, a city hardly known for its high-functioning infrastructure. With a rapidly growing population squeezed between sacred sites, and as ground zero for an intractable territorial conflict, Jerusalem is more or less an urban planner’s worst nightmare. When the light-rail system was first proposed, it was meant to ease congestion and unify the city. In addition to facing a host of logistical obstacles on its way to completion, the project prompted considerable opposition because the trains would cross borders that many people have fought hard to define and defend, separating East Jerusalem from West, Arab from Jew. After nearly a decade of construction, at a cost of more than $1 billion, the system began taking riders in August of 2011. As Daniel Estrin learned in riding it about town, if one thing unites commuting Jerusalemites, it’s their frustration with the train’s deficiencies. To celebrate Daniel Estrin’s achievement, we re-present his award-winning story and encourage you to listen to his series on Hidden Jerusalem.