by Matthew Friedman | Jun 6, 2023 | Commentary, Essays, Jewish Life
I laughed so hard that I passed beer through my nose. The occasion was the first episode of Saturday Night Live’s 14th season which aired just days after the High Holy Days in 1988. Hosted by Tom Hanks, whose movie Big had been a surprise summer blockbuster, with the...
by Matthew Friedman | May 14, 2023 | Essays
I have not worn my hammer-and-sickle T-shirt in public for a long time. In fairness, I rarely wear T-shirts in public, let alone logo T-shirts… these days, anyway. For some reason, as I have grown older, I keep hearing my late-mother’s voice in my head: “T-shirts are...
by Matthew Friedman | Apr 30, 2023 | Essays, Politics
The images of Israelis protesting in the streets of Tel Aviv are arresting. They have continued for months, sparked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government’s attempt to introduce judicial reforms that would undermine Israeli democracy....
by Matthew Friedman | Mar 8, 2023 | Essays
A crowd of 4,000 gathered in the chilly, late-spring rain to dedicate a memorial to America’s war dead in Newark’s Military Park. It was 1926, only seven-and-a-half years since the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War. Veterans stood on the dais...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 27, 2023 | Essays, Jewish Life
At the end Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, Kaiser Uberall accepts his fate: he will be sacrificed to restore the balance of life and death that his own arrogance and brutality so tragically upset. It is one of the most powerful moments in 20th century...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 19, 2023 | Commentary, Essays, Jewish Life
There is a note of tragic foreboding in the twelfth chapter of the first Book of Kings. This is where “Israel rebelled against the house of David” and the Kingdom of Israel, united under Saul, David, and Solomon, is split asunder as Jeroboam, a head man of the tribe...