by Matthew Friedman | Jan 5, 2023 | Commentary, Jewish Life
Amnesia is perhaps the only blessing of the rapid-fire news cycle. These are, after all, dark and trying times, and, as one headline horror falls upon the last, they each wash away prior outrages rather than piling up to be faintly recalled in year-end news roundups…...
by Matthew Friedman | Dec 2, 2022 | Commentary
Short, fragmented lines, like shards of broken glass in the sun, skipping from one facet to the next, thoughts interrupted and reconstituted on-the-fly, sometimes wandering, sometimes rushing forward – this was the Bob Hogg I met through the medium of poetry. The...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 25, 2022 | Nonfiction, Short Story
I walked with my maternal grandfather, P.E. Salter, along the banks of the Gatineau River behind my grandparents’ home in Wakefield, Quebec. There were still rafts of logs coming down from places like Maniwaki and Grand Remous, and he insisted that, if I looked...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 23, 2022 | Books, Jewish Life, Reviews
Aaron Samuel TamaresA Passionate Pacifist: Essential Writings of Aaron Samuel TamaresBen Yehuda Press At some point in 1877 or 1878, Aaron Samuel Tamares, then a young Cheder student in Grodno District of the Russian Empire, would to “stand glued for hours” before a...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 12, 2022 | Commentary, Essays, Jewish Life
It stopped me dead in my tracks as I was walking down Newark Ave. in Jersey City one morning in the winter of 2016, on my way to the Grove Street Path station: Someone had painted a large black swastika, surrounded by repeated instances of the doppelte Siegrune icon...
