“I am drawn to confusion: how we try to make sense of things, relationships, work, our family history, and how we cope, both in healthy and unhealthy ways, as well as compulsions, how we get stuck, and our desire to be unstuck, mostly, but not entirely, because those compulsions are part of our worldview.” Chicago’s Ben Tanzer is interviewed at Big Other. (We reviewed his Hold Steady-inspired novel You Can Make Him Like You last year.) A John Zorn-directed film […]
A Kaddish for Jewish Zines
By Jason Diamond Gawker’s proclamation of the “Heeb Magazine Deathwatch” got me thinking again about “radical Jewish culture”, but this time in terms of it’s short life, possible death, and whether the tag really means anything other than getting donors to contribute to off-kilter non-profits. Of course, I find that there have been valiant attempts to get the old gears of Jewish thought turning again. From what I can gather, John Zorn coined the phrase with his marvelous Tzadik label, […]