Top 8 reasons you should be at the Jewish Literary Festival

By Dana Mulhauser, Festival committee member extraordinaire

The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is now eight days into its eleven-day run, and I’ve been having a shockingly fun time attending events. “Why,” you ask me, “is that so shocking? Shouldn’t you, Dana, a member of the festival committee, have known how much fun the festival would be?”

O imaginary blog reader, thank you for being so inquisitive. Here is my answer for you. I expected to learn things from this festival and to add a few books to my reading list. I was unprepared for how riotously entertaining it would be.

So, in honor of the eighth day of the festival (and in preparation for Hannukah, which comes early this year), I offer you brief descriptions of eight entertaining elements of the literary festival:

1) Food. Not only did the festival provide me with brunch on Sunday, it even included babka. Do you think the National Book Festival has babka?

2.) Being read to. One author explained that, while she’s glad people listen to her audiobooks, she herself has no input into which actors do the readings or how they interpret the work. With that in mind, it’s it doubly lovely to hear an author read her own work — squeaky voices, silly accents, and all.

3) Spending time at the J. Yesterday I saw, entering the doors at the same time, two women carrying yoga mats, a man holding four books to be signed, and a woman eating a plate of roast chicken.

4) Great questions. At the Joel Chasnoff event, an American Air Force colonel asked why Israeli army officers dress like slobs. And yes, when asking the question, the officer stood at attention, shirt neatly tucked, pants pressed, and shoes shined.

5.) Great answers. Yesterday, someone told Allegra Goodman which part of her last book she thought was lousy. The author answered with such grace, thougtfulness, and aplomb that it made me want to read the book all the more (and to be her friend).

6.) Comfortable chairs. Really.

7.) Lively debate. I’m not sure what was better theater: watching Leon Wieseltier banter with Ruth Franklin, watching Ruth Franklin banter with her questioners, or watching the audience watch everyone else’s bantering.

8.) The audience. Any crowd of readers is going to be a good crowd, but these have seemed particularly friendly. I’ve run into old friends, conversed with total strangers, and gotten more suggestions for new books than I know what to do with.

So there you have it. Lucky for you all, there are three more days of the festival to go. So come debate capitalism and the Jews with Jerry Muller, hear a little historical romance with Jessica Jiji, and nosh with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. I’ll see you there.

Required Reading for Rick Sanchez and Jon Stewart

What to make of Rick Sanchez’s bizarre and self-destructive anti-Semitic outburst? Well, Jon Stewart, who was the Jewish synecdoche in his rant, made some gentle fun of it and Rick Sanchez on his show Monday night. Yes, he made Sanchez look foolish, but Sanchez had already done that on his own. At the end, he pretty much lets him off the hook by stating, “I’m not even sure Sanchez believes what he’s saying.” There were some follow-up columns today, word of an apology and the whole affair seems ready to fade as its Friday to Monday lifespan expires.

But missing in the ensuing fallout has been the more delicate question, not of whether Rick Sanchez believed what he was saying, but why, throughout the ages have similar charges been levelled at Jews and believed in the first place? Why is it that the refrain of “Jews control (fill in the blank: CNN, the media, the banks, all of capitalism)” has such durability?

There are two parts to that answer, and the first is the acknowledgement that Jews have been very succesful in the media and in Western capitalism generally. Prominently successful? Definitely. Disproportionately successful? Perhaps. And at times that success has made Jews a target for groups that are dissatisfied and under duress (and when your show is getting the shove for Eliot Spitzer’s comeback, you’re definitely under duress). While that explanation satisfies the sociological explanation of how one group comes to blame another, it sidesteps a more delicate question: Why are Jews more or more prominently successful in capitalist societies?

That is the question at the heart of Jerry Muller’s suddenly all-too-timely Capitalism and the Jews which is being featured on October 25 as a part of our Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival. The title itself is provocative because the Jewish community has been reluctant to discuss its own success so publicly. Muller writes in his introduction, “some Jews regard the public discussion of Jews and capitalism as intrinsically impolitic, as if conspiratorial fantasies about Jews and money can be eliminated by prudent silence.” In its willingness to look studiously at the history of Jews and the rise of capitalism, this book reminds me a lot of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler, which tackled the history of the Jewish moguls who established the film industry as an economic and cultural force in American life.

While Gabler structured his book around the biographies of the Hollywood moguls and the studios they created, Muller breaks his study into four sections: “The Long Shadow of Usury,” which examines the rise of capitalism and Jews’ early roles in it; “The Jewish Response to Capitalism” which further explains the success of Jews in modern capitalist societies and the communal response to this dominant ism; “Radical Anticapitalism” which looks at what Muller calls “the dialectic of disaster; anti-Semitism led Jews to prominent positions in Communist movements, and their very salience in a movement that threatened existing society provided new fuel for anti-Semitism.” Finally, Muller looks at the sometimes lethal mix of capitalism and nationalism — and the important ways in which nationalistic kinship can both shape and be shaped by economic development and disaster.

Of course, a logical exposition of the history and consequences of Jews and capitalism should be all that’s needed to put to rest these silly conspiracy theories and fury-fueled anti-Semitic rants.

Then again, maybe Jon Stewart should have Jerry Muller on his show. They’d have a lot to talk about.