Living in a world that is getting bigger and bigger, one feels as if one is becoming smaller and smaller. This realization can lead one to feel anonymous and depressed. Feeling unique or special, it seems, is the only antidote. But is this the right way to think? The tug and pull of anonymity and […]
A book – or at least an essay or two – should be written on the treatment of Martin Buber in Jewish-American fiction. Perhaps I will write it (or them). His book I and Thou gained a lot of attention in America when it was first translated. And although it was praised by many in […]
Many great thinkers and writers of the 20th century were interested in children and in the experience of becoming childlike. One need only think of Freud and his obsession with the child’s development. Walter Benjamin wrote of childhood throughout his career, Kafka wrote of characters who had child-like sensibilities, nearly every story by Robert Walser […]
One of the most interesting confluences between German Romantic conceptions of humor and a certain thread of Jewish-German Philosophy is the obsession with time, immediacy, and illumination. The two seem like odd bedfellows since, after all, religion is a serious affair and humor, as a matter of course, is not. The witz, like revelation, is […]
Sacha Baron Cohen has, to be sure, played the schlemiel character in nearly every one of his productions. From Ali G to Borat, we see that Cohen prefers to cast and create comical characters with a schlemiel sensibility. To be sure, Cohen has in many ways taken on the legacy of Charlie Chaplin (who Hannah […]
I come from a few generations of New York Jews. My father went to Brooklyn Tech and Columbia University. He was born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan. My mothers parents moved from the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, to Queens, and then to Long Island. But we were the first in the family […]
In a vignette dated May 1920, Kafka’s favorite writer, Robert Walser reflects on smallness by way of moods, one in the morning, the other in the evening, that return to smallness. I would like to argue that it can be read as a fascinating reflection on what Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism) calls Tzimtzum. Tzimtzum is a […]
One of my favorite scenes in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1976) is near the end, when Alvy Singer flies out to Los Angeles from New York City to see Annie Hall. The plot twists when Alvy Singer meets Tony Lacey (played by Paul Simon), a music star, at his party. People are flocked around Tony, […]
Like many American Jews, I am curious about the life of my grandparents and great grandparents. On one side of my family, both of my grandparents were born in Europe but my father and his brothers were all born and raised in New York City. My grandparents on the other side of my family, however, […]
Today is Saul Bellow’s birthday. In honor of his birthday, I have decided to hyperlink several essays I have written on his wonderful work. Enjoy! Saul Bellow on Shalom Aleichem’s Motl. Saul Bellow’s Literary Question: What Happens When a Schlemiel Nearly Dies While-Watching-A-Trial? A Schlemiel With a Russian Revolver: On the Un-Heroic Conduct of […]
Schlemiel Theory 