I was born and raised in a small town in the Adirondacks called Mayfield. In elementary school, I was the only Jew in my class. When we sang in the school assembly in December, we sang several Christmas carols; but to make sure I didn’t feel like the odd one out, the teachers included two […]
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, […]
Last Sunday (May 3), I spoke at Knesseth Israel Synagogue which is located in my hometown: Gloversville, New York. I talked about the Schlemiel, being an American and a Jew, and my family’s path to and in America. The following is an article written by Brian Moskowitz, a freelance journalist and copywriter currently based in […]
I recently made a guest appearance of the Burning Books Podcast (a podcast dedicated to literature) and spoke about “glovemaking” in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, the novel itself, being raised in a glovemaking family in Gloversville, New York, the schlemiel, my blog, my new book project, and much much more. Here is the description […]
A birthday is an event, a happening that unfolds in time. And today is my birthday. But instead of dwelling on the day or on time, one of the things I always like to do for my birthday is to get in my car and travel to places in the United States where I went […]
When I first read Phillip Roth’s American Pastoral, I was blown away by the plot. It was based on something very close to my own life-story: the decline of a Jewish family (the Levovs) which coincides with the rise and fall of the leather business in upstate New York. Indeed, Roth’s words on Gloversville, New […]
As a Jew who was born and raised in the Adirondack foothills, I have always been curious as to how my Jewishness was different from my relatives and friends from New York City. Both of my parents were born and raised in New York City, so this difference, so to speak, hit home. My father […]
In America, we have always been told that one can go from rags to riches but we have not been shown the opposite is also true. As a child, I learned both stories and lived with the thin line between the two. Woody Allen’s film, Blue Jasmine, reminded me of this traumatic experience which, for […]
Words cannot express the honor and gratitude I have for Chad Derrick who decided a few years ago to film my life and my Jewish-American story. He patiently followed me around with a camera for a few years and listened to my story. He edited hundreds of hours of film to distill it to its […]
We like to repeat ourselves. And oftentimes we forget what we said before and are reminded by our friends that “we already said that.” Nonetheless, people being people, we forget and do it again. The people most susceptible to this blindness are older people. However, sometimes repetitions – which are seemingly absent-minded – are full […]
Schlemiel Theory 