Shofar back issues from June 2007:
"Cool Jewz": contemporary Jewish identity in popular culture--an introduction.
Jun 22, 2007; ... "Cool Jewz." The term came to me as a response to watching the film The Hebrew Hammer (Jonathan Kesselman, 2003). What is going on, I asked myself, in Jewish Popular Culture? Since 1988 and Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own, Jon Stratton's Coming Out Jewish, David Zurawik's The Jews of ...
The Fockerized Jew?: questioning Jewishness as cool in American popular entertainment.(Essay)
Jun 22, 2007; ... This essay examines the recent upsurge in overt Jewish identity in American popular culture, using the film Meet the Parents (2000) and its sequel Meet the Fockers (2004) as a case study to demonstrate how the Jewish Jew is no longer avoided and when portrayed does not fall victim to ...
"Cutting off your nose to spite your race": Jewish stereotypes, media images, cultural hybridity.
Jun 22, 2007; ... This paper explores the growing acceptability of the "Jewish" nose amongst women in Hollywood and in television as an indicator of Jewish acceptability. At a time when cosmetic surgery to alter appearances of media stars as well as ordinary people has become a growth industry, rhinoplasty ...
From ugly duckling to cool fashion icon: Sarah Jessica Parker's blonde ambitions.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Sarah Jessica Parker is a cool Jew, or so we argue in this essay. That is, the actress and the role that made her most famous--Sex and the City's iconic Carrie Bradshaw--offer fans a particular kind of pleasure that comes from identifying with an actor and character who are presented as, ...
"That was nifty": Willow Rosenberg saves the world in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2007; ... The extent to which ethnicity permeates an understanding of identity in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is apparent from the ways in which species difference stands in for racial or ethnic difference. However, among its many points of contact with ethnicity, one that is especially curious is the ...
Jewish/queer: thresholds of vulnerable identities in Tony Kushner's Angels in America.(Critical essay)
Jun 22, 2007; ... For many, it has long seemed apparent that in his two-part "gay fantasia," Angels in America, Kushner aspired to forge some vital but unspoken alliance between Judaism and gay struggle. For many, this remains one of the play's most interesting and yet not altogether coherent arguments. Yet ...
Oppositional culture and the "New Jew" brand: from Plotz to Heeb to Lost Tribe.(Essay)
Jun 22, 2007; ... This essay considers how an amateur literary production, Plotz: The Zine for the Vaclempt, helped to construct both an oppositional and an eminently marketable form of contemporary Jewish identity. Barbara Rushkoff, nee Kligman, the wit behind Plotz, yoked zine writing practices and ...
Punk, Jews, and the holocaust--the English story.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Punk in England is usually thought of as being related to a critique of stadium rock or to the disillusionment of a generation that saw nothing in the future but drudgery. In this article I argue that punk has more profound connections. Punk in England was driven by two Jewish managers, ...
To play or pray? Shawn Green and his choice over atonement.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Examining the specific reaction and context of meaning for Shawn Green's yearly internal battle between religious/personal commitments and job/team, and the historic context of Hank Greenberg's similar battles, this paper reflects on the complex and sometimes contradictory place of ...
Everyman.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Everyman, by Philip Roth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. 182 pp. $24.00 (p). Philip Roth's Everyman, his twenty-seventh book, is all about death, and appropriately its title on the dust jacket appears boxed in red against a background of black. These initial intimations ...
Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth, by Elaine B. Safer. New York: State University of New York Press, 2006. 219 pp. $21.95. Writers do not always get the critics they deserve--a scholar, who is also a warm-blooded person, with the life experience and fine tuned ...
Telling the Little Secrets: American Jewish Writings since the 1980s.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Telling the Little Secrets: American Jewish Writings since the 1980s, by Janet Burstein. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 264 pp. $45.00. By now Irving Howe's dire prediction of the death of Jewish literature has undergone its own death. The outpouring of Jewish ...
Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, by Anna Shternshis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. 252 pp. $24.95. The law of unintended consequences defines Anna Shternshis' fascinating new book, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture ...
A Concise History of the Third Reich.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... A Concise History of the Third Reich, by Wolfgang Benz, translated by Thomas Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 309 pp. $35.00. Wolfgang Benz directs the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universistat in Berlin. He has written excellent ...
The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, by Rochelle G. Saidel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. 279 pp. $21.90. As the number of Holocaust survivors who are able to tell their histories decreases, the urgency increases to leave a record of their ...
Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism and the Problem of English.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism and the Problem of English, by Alan Rosen. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 241 pp. $45.00. Alan Rosen, who has read widely in recent scholarship on the Holocaust, engages the ideas of such thinkers as ...
Judische Polonitat: Ethnizitat und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen judischen Presse 1918-1939.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Judische Polonitat: Ethnizitat und Nation im Spiegel der polnischsprachigen judischen Presse 1918-1939, by Katrin Steffen. Schriften des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts, Band 3. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2004. 422 pp. [euro]48.90. Katrin Steffen frames this valuable book's ...
Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, by Paul Kriwaczek. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 384 pp. $27.50. Reading about the history of the Yiddish civilization has never been so engaging, uplifting, and pleasurable. Paul Kriwaczek's book, Yiddish ...
Sephardic Identity: Essays on a Vanishing Jewish Culture.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Sephardic Identity: Essays on a Vanishing Jewish Culture, edited by George K. Zucker. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2005. 230 pp. $39.95. This anthology is edited by George Zucker, who is a professor emeritus of Spanish language and literature at the University ...
Political Learning and Citizenship under Conflict: The Political Socialization of Israeli and Palestinian Youngsters.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Political Learning and Citizenship under Conflict: The Political Socialization of Israeli and Palestinian Youngsters, by Orit Ichilov. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. 206 pp. $125.00. Dr. Ichilov introduces the reader to the theory and research associated with political ...
The Palestinian National Movement: Politics of Contention, 1967-2005.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... The Palestinian National Movement: Politics of Contention, 1967-2005, by Amal Jamal. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005. 229 pp. $22.95. The first thing to say about this book, as will be obvious to any potential reader, is that it is extremely timely ....
The Losing Battle with Islam.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... The Losing Battle with Islam, by David Selbourne. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2005. 488 pp. $28.00. Listed as an historian of ideas at Ruskin College, Oxford University and a free-lance journalist, Selbourne has written this dense, rambling book more as the journalist than ...
Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security & Foreign Policy.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security & Foreign Policy, by Zeev Maoz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 714 pp. $ 45.00. This book was written by a "strategist," as described by the author, as against the "linear" approach based on ...
God's Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... God's Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory, by Yaron Z. Eliav. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 353 pp. $40.00. This book offers a history of the Temple Mount (har ha-bayit) in Jerusalem that is consciously at odds with the common ...
Wisdom at Qumran: A Form-Critical Analysis of the Admonitions in 4QInstruction.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Wisdom at Qumran: A Form-Critical Analysis of the Admonitions in 4QInstruction, by Daryl F. Jefferies. Gorgias Dissertations, Near Eastern Studies 3. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004. 336 pp. $75.00. Jefferies' Wisdom at Qumran is the first monograph devoted to the literary ...
Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy, by Samuel C. Heilman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 363 pp. $24.95. In the contemporary battle for the hearts and minds of American Orthodox Jews, the sectarian religious values of ...
Strangers in The Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Strangers in The Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America, by Eric Sundquist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. 662 pp. $35.00. Attention to relations between Jews and Blacks has produced an extensive body of academic and popular literature, and Eric Sundquist ...
American Artists, Jewish Images.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... American Artists, Jewish Images, by Matthew Baigell. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2006. 272 pages. 77 black-and-white illustrations. $45.00. Matthew Baigell's American Artists, Jewish Images is an illuminating study of the work of Helene Aylon, Ben-Zion, ...
Who She Was: My Search for My Mother's Life.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... Who She Was: My Search for My Mother's Life, by Samuel G. Freedman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. 331 pp. $25.00. For most Jewish baby boomers, the gross outlines of our parents' lives are usually relatively simple to sketch--the Depression, the war, and the postwar boom ....
The Myth of the Jewish Race: A Biologist's Point of View.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2007; ... The Myth of the Jewish Race: A Biologist's Point of View, by Alain F. Corcos. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2005. 170 pp. $39.50. With the best of intentions Alain Corcos, a biologist, seeks to bury--for all time--the ludicrous myth that Jews constitute a "race." The crux ...
Book notes.(Bibliography)
Jun 22, 2007 ... Biblical and Rabbinic Literature Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition, by Elizabeth Shanks Alexander. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 246 pp. $75.00. ISBN 0-521-85750-3. Departing from the conventional view of mishnaic ...