An engaging gathering of voices demonstrate “the one truth of American Jewish identity: it can never be pinned down.”
An examination of the “debate over who gets to speak for American Jews and who gets to claim American Jewishness.”
Journalist Tamkin, author of The Influence of Soros, explores a wide variety of questions about the Jewish faith and identity and the murky concept of so-called “good” and “bad” Jews. Is the distinction tied to Zionism and Israel? Should Jews be defined by religious or political ties, or perhaps even racial or ethnic? Do the Ashkenazi Jews have a more “authentic” Jewish experience than Sephardic Jews, who first came to America in the 17th century? Do good Jews vote for progressive Democrats or vehemently pro-Israel conservatives? “I would argue that the fact that we are in a time of change and conflict and challenge has thrown many American Jews off-balance,” writes the author. “Things are not as they were. But that, in turn, means there is an opportunity to think about what things could be.” Tamkin begins her “roughly hundred-year history of Jewish American politics, culture, identities, and arguments” with the massive Jewish immigration to America in the 1920s, after which Jews started to assimilate into the mainstream. The author explores a variety of stereotypes about Jewishness and immigration, and she interweaves her own relatives’ history into the national story. When Joseph McCarthy was wreaking havoc across the nation, Jews were targeted disproportionately, especially in Hollywood. Tamkin then moves through the civil rights era; the rise of the neoconservative movement, epitomized by Commentary magazine and its outspoken editor, Norman Podheretz; and the wild financial excesses of the 1980s, represented by Michael Milken and Bernie Madoff, among others, who played into antisemitic stereotypes. Though not a rigorous, scholarly treatment of the subject, the book ably reflects the author’s experience as a skilled journalist and storyteller.
An engaging gathering of voices demonstrate “the one truth of American Jewish identity: it can never be pinned down.”Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-307401-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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