Showing Results 1 - 10 of 10
Mariette was preparing for her first communion. This was serious:
“The most beautiful day of my life, you understand!”
I didn’t understand.
“There’ll be bells ringing and music and lights…
Yom Kippur, when the narrow alleys of the shulhoyf
cradle the small shtibls, pious and scared,
householders hurry with their taleisim
and old men shuffle along in their socks—
I feel the narrow…
Anti-Semitism in my infancy, had its compensations, for being confined practically to children (I speak of anti-Semitism not as a subjective attitude but in its…
Now whatever else may be involved in a nondeliberate change of accent, one thing is clear: it bespeaks a very high degree of detachment from the ethos of one’s immediate surroundings. It is…
In those days, but especially since the year 1740, when Frederick the Great ascended the throne, various social circles in Berlin began zealously to acquire intellectual knowledge. Even among…
After Moshkele found his way to the Goyim’s Street, he began to be a regular and made the acquaintance of the shkotsim [“goyish” boys]. At first they mocked the little Yid who had wandered…
Of course I could explain the history and the comings and goings of the Jews, assuring you that they have suffered much, that everyone persecuted them because they could, that those caricatures you’d…
“I must go to carols tomorrow night.”
Mother is serving the soup. Chicken soup again, with noodles, for the third day in a row. While from next door, a roast tickles the nostrils. A myriad globules…
There is a certain place where dumb-waiters boom, doors slam, dishes crash; every window is a mother’s mouth bidding the street shut up, go skate somewhere else, come home. My voice is the loudest. […
In the hot tranquillity of Sunday afternoons in Lusaka, beyond the shrill whistle of the cicadas and the drone of radio sports commentaries, we could hear the muffled thudding of tribal drums.
The…