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...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 25, 2022 | Commentary, Essays
Malachy Salter was the great mythical ancestor of my mother’s family. We held him up as a kind of buccaneering merchant hero who operated two privateers under Letters of Marque from King George II and King George III, first out of Boston and then, as was the case of...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 8, 2022 | Commentary
I recall a college history professor once saying that Richard Coeur de Lion is remembered as one of Britain’s greatest monarchs mostly because he spent a little less than six months of his ten-year reign in Britain. His brother John, who ruled as regent as Richard...
