by Matthew Friedman | Jan 11, 2023 | Essays
I remember the night that my father came home from work with a copy of the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields’ recording of Bach’s The Art of Fugue. It was a double-LP boxed-set (recorded music came on black vinyl discs in those days) with extensive...
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 | Jul 31, 2022 | Essays
“Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles,” Gustave Flaubert wrote in Madame Bovary, “la dorure en reste aux mains.” We must not touch our idols, lest the gilt comes off on our hands. Flaubert’s warning has been echoing in my mind as I have repeatedly scrolled past Annie...
by Matthew Friedman | May 27, 2022 | Essays, Jewish Life
I am not an optimist by inclination. I was raised Jewish in the 1960s and 1970s, and learned about the full enormity of the Shoah from people who experienced it. There were Nella Lacks, and Mr. Preisler at summer camp, who had the numbers on their arms; so did Mr....
by Matthew Friedman | May 4, 2022 | Essays, Politics
I can hear my mother’s voice: “You shouldn’t say things like that.” Nancy Salter, who died 16 years ago, was a brilliant writer and editor, a social worker, and an activist committed to social justice and the project of making the world a better place. She was also a...