On a quote for these times
With thanks to Max Liebermann
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Next Monday, paid subscribers will get this month’s ET Ask Home. Probably on Monday, which is Martin Luther King Jr Day and also Trump’s inauguration, because the arc of the moral universe is long but—well, it’s long.
Paid subscribers to this newsletter also get The Political Cycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on politics in the US, UK, India, and the wider world, early and directly to their inboxes from me (these posts will now unlock later, after the episode becomes free to everyone).
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For the Forward, I wrote about the ceasefire deal and what I consider to be a key difference between this and Carter and the Iran hostage crisis.
This week on the podcast, Rohan and I talked about the fires in LA, climate change, disaster relief, and what it means for the US and the world that these have fallen into partisan politics.
I am obsessed with Orna Guralnik, the star/therapist of Couples Therapy, so I have to recommend this Financial Times interview with her, which is like half fun q&a about art and beauty products and half relationship advice.
Also from the Financial Times, a smart piece about how corporate America is reacting to Trump’s election by declaring that they’ve had enough of diversity initiatives and it’s time to say “pussy” again.
For my fellow Payal Kapadia-heads: “Indian director Payal Kapadia is developing two additional features set in Mumbai, potentially forming a trilogy with her acclaimed fiction feature debut ‘All We Imagine as Light.’” (This whole newsletter was almost about Kapadia. I saw All We Imagine as Light with my mom in New York last fall and loved it. Then, last Thursday, I watched her documentary, A Night of Knowing Nothing, on Criterion and loved that, too. I then managed to find all her shorts except for Memory of Being Here so if anyone knows how I can watch that, please let me know!)
I found this piece about Gen Z women who watched A Complete Unknown and related to/learning more about Joan Baez because they, too, are being treated terribly by men to be very funny.
MY VIEWS ON…
…a quote for these times!
I want to preface this by saying I am not comparing the current Republican party to the Nazis or Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler or anything like that. I am only saying that this quote has been rattling around my head all week and I am going to share it here, that it might rattle around yours, too:
Max Liebermann was a German painter and printmaker and proponent of Impressionism in Germany. His was an upper-class Jewish family. And when he saw the Nazis marching down Under den Linden after coming to power, he is reported to have said, “Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte,” which translates to, “I could not possibly eat as much as I would like to throw up.” Which is, in my view, a basically perfect line to express disgust.
He was also forced to resign as president of the Berlin Academy because of antisemitic legislation and had his work removed and confiscated from museums and collectors. He died two years later of natural causes. But his work lives on and, importantly to me at this moment, that quote does, too.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
From JTA: “Facing opposition from some of his allies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed a planned Cabinet meeting to approve a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.”
I thought this paper on where scholars on the Holocaust fall on Israel (or, if you like, on Israel as a faultline in Holocaust scholarship) was very useful.
From the Times of Israel: “The migration of Israelis to the Netherlands is the sole reason for the growth of the European country’s Jewish population, according to a new study published by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).”
Our rabbi is retiring and did this nice interview with Washington Jewish Week about his upbringing, present, and what comes next.
I read Mikołaj Grynberg’s Confidential: A Novel, which you will like if you like vignettes on Polish Jews. I think he's maybe a genius, and you might remember me blabbing here about this great video exhibit of his I saw in which he interviewed Polish Jews about being Jewish in Poland today. The book is a fast read (it took me three days) but not a vapid one. My only criticism is that he doesn’t use names for anyone and I will confess that at points I had some difficulty figuring out who I was talking about.
Drake, stop this right now, I am so serious.
-ET
Image from the Liebermann Villa.