anti-Semitism

Philip Guston, Untitled, 1971, Ink on paper, 26.7 x 35.2 cm = 10 1/2 x 13 7/8 in, Private Collection. © The Estate of Philip Guston, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth [GUSTO77446]

Guston Presidents Cartoons Questions?

November 4, 2016 by William Eaton

In a number of Philip Guston’s more than 100 cartoon-style drawings of Richard Nixon, which are currently on view at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York City, the former President’s nose and jowls are transformed into a cock and balls (or scrotum).[1] We recognize the long-standing association of the nose and the penis, and can understand that Guston, in his sixties, was making his way back from Abstract Expressionism toward the cartooning of his adolescence. He was exaggerating the […]

Categories: ZiLL • Tags: anti-Semitism, cartoons, Cyrano de Bergerac, drawing, Jews, John F. Kennedy, Ku Klux Klan, McCarthyism, noses, Philip Guston, Philip Roth, Presidential campaigns, Richard Nixon, United Nations

The Immigration Debate—from the 1920s

August 16, 2016 by Martin Green

Stanching the Flow By Martin Green The emergence of immigration as a major issue worldwide and especially in the presidential campaign—thanks to Donald Trump’s vociferous attack on alleged rapists, drug dealers, and other criminals sneaking across the southern border, to say nothing of the threat posed by terrorists hiding among Moslem refugees—is not, of course, the first time Americans have debated the issue of access to American society by aliens. The early 1920s was the decade in which […]

Categories: Article • Tags: American history, anti-Semitism, Donald Trump, immigrants, immigration

Touching the Memory

September 7, 2014 by William Eaton

My father usually invited an oirech (a poor person) from among those who had lined up at the door of the Beit HaMidrash to join us for [a Sabbath] meal. These were itinerant beggars, of whom there were, unfortunately, many in Poland. I was fascinated by these vagabonds who lived at the margin of our society, and their presence at our table added excitement and mystery to the celebration. This from a memoir by the former rabbi and director of […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: anti-Semitism, ethics, Holocaust, Jews, Judaism, religion

Reviving Shylock

May 1, 2013 by Aaron Botwick

That Troublesome Jew Shylock and the Corruption of “The Merchant of Venice” By Aaron Botwick In 1947, the actor and playwright Maurice Schwartz rather audaciously rewrote The Merchant of Venice. The result, Shylock and His Daughter, is a radically philosemitic text, one that throws out most of Shakespeare’s play and replaces it with a kind, Jewish moneylender surrounded by antisemitic, unforgiving Christians.[1] Comic villain had become comic hero. But only five years after 1942—a date that, like 70 CE […]

Categories: Article, Spring 2013 Issue • Tags: anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Shakespeare, theater

Philip Roth in 1968; Bob Peterson/Time Life Pictures. Image appeared in "Portnoy's Complaint – still shocking at 40," an article in The Guardian "Books blog" by Chris Cox, posted September 7, 2009

For Love of Portnoy

November 15, 2012 by Daniel Taub

Developing a Jewish identity in Philip Roth’s America By Daniel Taub It is coming out of my ears already, the saga of the suffering Jews! Do me a favor, my people, and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering ass—I happen also to be a human being! — Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint In the United States we have struggled for our entire history with the integration of racial, ethnic and religious minorities—with who is allowed into American society […]

Categories: Essay, Fall 2012 Issue • Tags: anti-Semitism, Philip Roth