Israel’s Paradox of Authority — the Paper
My paper on Israel’s Paradox of Authority
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My thoughts on book reviews and culture
A recent piece in The Economist (I’m an avid cover-to-cover reader of the newspaper) has prompted me to articulate my thoughts on the dynamics of culture; my letter is below. The Economist lamented the grade inflation in book reviews today, compared with a prewar golden age of sharper pens when reviewers were willing to be …
Israel’s Paradox of Authority — the Presentation
My presentation (PDF) at the Socio-legal Studies Association conference, the University of Ulster, April 2023.
Israel Needs Constitution, Not Basic Law
Constitution Needed: When Israel’s founding leaders declared independence in 1948, they promised to govern through a constitution. That vow remains unfulfilled to this day. The Forward, 2012
Provisional Loyalty to a Provisional State
Each of us gets to decide whether to follow the rules or change them. In Hebrew we call this ‘combina,’ a slang word referring to the bypassing of rules or commitments. Haaretz, October 15, 2010 A historic event passed almost unnoticed on Sunday. A group of some 200 intellectuals and other public figures gathered in …
Town Hall vs Shtetl Yeshiva: Constitutional Lessons from New York and Jerusalem
The LGBT Center’s Town Hall: A Jerusalem Take, Gay City News, March 31, 2011 At the end of the two-hour town hall meeting at the LGBT Community Center, nobody looked particularly content. No party was recognized as victorious; little news awaited breaking; no obvious sound bites emerged to shape future discourse. After two time extensions, …
A Zionist Jew’s guidelines for the LGBT community
The Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2017 When a strong majority of Americans support LGBT equality, it takes a lot for a pride parade in any American city to cause a controversy, but the Chicago Dyke March, now in its 21st year, did exactly that in June. And it isn’t even the city’s official pride parade, …
Review of Jack Holmes and his Friend by Edmund White
It’s Love versus Sex in White’s Latest The Gay and Lesbian Review, May-June 2012 Jack Holmes and His Friend: A Novel by Edmund White Bloomsbury. 400 pages, $26. TRUST EDMUND WHITE not to shy away from sex. Now, in his latest novel Jack Holmes and his Friend, the master of the queer eye directs …
How to Read Kafka?
Kafka’s Bed The following exercise is intended for night owls who have a hard time waking up in the morning: Imagine a scenario to get you out of bed. That, I suggest, is more or less the Gedankenexperiment, perhaps the creative impulse behind much of Kafka’s work. I don’t mean it as an interpretation …
Review of Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut
What Was Forster Thinking? The Gay and Lesbian Review, July-Aug. 2015 “ARCTIC SUMMER,” the title of an unfinished novel by E. M. Forster, well suits this fictional biography of the English writer. It’s hard to imagine a writer further away from the romantic image of the struggling, mercurial artist. Forster was born in 1879 and …
Review of Martha Nussbaum and Saul Levmore’s Book on American Masculinity
Legally Male The Gay and Lesbian Review, March-April 2015 MASCULINITY is a flexible enough concept, and America is a large enough country, that the essays in this collection cannot be reduced to a single dimension or formula. American Guy, edited by Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum, grew out of an academic conference of the law …
Review of Barney Frank’s Autobiography
Homo Economicus The Gay and Lesbian Review, Sep.- Oct. 2015 Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank Farrar, Straus and Giroux 400 pages, $28. GAY, JEWISH, and left-handed, Barney Frank likes to say that he’s a natural advocate for minorities. At the same time, had he not been …
Review of Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes by Richard Davenport-Hines
What Makes an Economist Great? The Gay and Lesbian Review, Nov.-Dec. 2015 Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes by Richard Davenport-Hines Basic Books, 432 pages, $29.99 JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES would not make a great Hollywood protagonist, at least based on Richard Davenport-Hines’ biography. It’s hard to identify a breakthrough moment, any dramatic shift, …
Review of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Deus Sex Machina
Yanagihara’s best-seller defies expectations in a wholly expected way.
Review of Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt
What the famous historian Saul Friedländer gets right (and wrong) about Kafka.
Review of Sarah Schulman’s Pinkwashing Book
How Schulman unwittingly undermines her own argument.
Review of Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America by Roy Morris Jr.
Strange Man in a Strange Land The Gay & Lesbian Review, Sep.-Oct. 2013 Review of Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America by Roy Morris Jr. Belknap Press. 264 pages, $26.95 THE TITLE of Declaring His Genius refers to Oscar Wilde’s notorious remark upon landing in New York in 1882 (“I have nothing to …
Thousands Become Millions: An Error in Translation Gains Credence in The New York Times
תקציב הפרסום הגאה של עיריית תל-אביב וגלגוליה של טעות תרגום העין השביעית, 30 בינואר 2012 נניח שאתם העורכים של עיתון ישראלי הצריכים להעריך את התקציב של מסע פרסום במימון ציבורי להאדרת שמה של תל-אביב כמעוז הומואי מצטיין. בלי להציץ, מהי לדעתכם עלותו הכוללת של הקמפיין? עכשיו מותר להציץ. ב-21 בפברואר 2011 פירסם ynet ידיעה שעניינה …
Confessions of a Pinkwasher
Gay City News, December 7, 2011 The New York Times recently dedicated precious space to the follies of Israel’s public relations. I’m not talking about Sarah Schulman’s “Israel and Pinkwashing,” which alleges that the Israeli government effectively leverages the gains of the LGBT community to have its way with the Palestinians, but rather a Times …
Bias in Black and White
The venomous disregard for the truth makes Spanish criticism of Israel banal and misses important issues. This simplistic anti-Israel narrative represents not a noble struggle for human rights, but rather a contamination of both journalism and the great democracy that the newspaper serves. (Read on the Haaretz website) Haaretz, April 3, 2009 Imagine that Spanish …