Vox Tablet

In the beginning, there were just old Jews telling jokes—you know, Uncle Buddy down in Boca or grandpa’s bawdy second wife Hettie. Then, in 2008, filmmaker Sam Hoffman had the idea of filming some of his favorite old Jews telling jokes. He created a website and posted a series of “Old Jews Telling Jokes” videos that soon attracted a devoted following. The most popular jokes (such as this one, about giving directions) have been viewed well over a million times. Now, at the initiative of Daniel Okrent—the first public editor for the New York Times—and writer and editor Peter Gethers, Old Jews Telling Jokes has been re-purposed as a theatrical production, complete with a narrative through-line and cabaret-style musical numbers. Currently in previews, it opens May 20 at the Westside Theater in...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Aleppo Codex, which dates back to the 10th century, is considered by many Bible scholars to be the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible that has ever existed. Yet most Jews have never heard of it. Four years ago, Jerusalem-based reporter Matti Friedman set out to change that fact, researching the codex’s mysterious history: how it changed hands from the Jews of Aleppo, Syria, where it had been safeguarded for centuries, to tightly held institutional control in the state of Israel—where it became decidedly more imperiled, and where large portions of the codex went missing. Friedman explores this journey in The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss the codex’s clandestine journey to Israel in the late 1950s, what might have happened to sections of the codex that have gone missing, and the struggle of the Jews of Aleppo to regain control of their community’s most prized religious...  See acast.com/pr

In 1996, just as the Honorable Madeleine Korbelova Albright was confirmed as secretary of State—the country’s first woman to hold that post—revelations came to light that her Czech parents, neither of whom were living by then, had been born Jews. Josef and Anna (née Spieglová) Korbel converted to Catholicism in 1941, when Josef was working for the exiled Czech government in London. The information, which Albright learned of just a few months before it was made public, raised many questions: Why had her parents converted, and why had they never told her? Why had she never figured it out? And what happened to the relatives who remained in Czechoslovakia during World War II and after? It was only when her term as secretary of State ended that Albright was able to pursue answers to these questions in earnest. In her new book, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, she chronicles her search and the answers she found. She joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about...  See acast.com/pri

Jerusalem is not known for its high-functioning infrastructure. With a rapidly growing population squeezed between sacred sites, and as ground zero for an intractable territorial conflict, it’s pretty much an urban planner’s worst nightmare. To wit: Jerusalem’s plan to build a light-rail system to ease congestion and unify the city. In addition to facing a host of logistical obstacles, the proposal prompted considerable opposition because the trains would cross borders that many people have fought hard to define and defend, separating East Jerusalem from West, Arab from Jew. After nearly a decade of construction, at a cost of over a billion dollars, the system finally opened several months ago. But if there’s one thing that unites these commuting Jerusalemites, it’s their frustration with the train’s deficiencies. Daniel Estrin filed this report. [Running time: 15:02.]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Many of the estimated 200,000 living Holocaust survivors face a new trauma in their final years, as they are overwhelmed by terrible memories they’ve successfully contained for 70 years. In some cases, the return of these memories is the outcome of a natural instinct, as we age, to look back over our lives. For others, it’s the result of what has been termed late-onset post-traumatic stress disorder, which brings on flashbacks, bouts of paranoia, and other debilitating symptoms. Reporter Karen Brown introduces us to survivors and their family members (including Howard Reich, whose documentary film Prisoner of her Past chronicled his mother’s mental decline), as well as social workers and specialists working with them, to find out more about this painful last chapter in a survivor’s life, and about what can be done to help them. [Running time: 17:00.]...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In 1999, a young woman in Colorado named Shonnie Medina died of breast cancer. Tests revealed that she carried a gene mutation commonly associated with Jews—yet Medina was a Hispano, meaning that her ancestry was both Native American and Spanish, with no known Jewish background. Other family members similarly turned out to be carriers of this potentially deadly gene; some have died from or been diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer. How this clan of Roman Catholic Hispanos became carriers of this mutation is the subject of a new book by Jeff Wheelwright: The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess: Race, Religion, and DNA tells Medina’s tragic tale as well as the story of how one specific genetic marker could have made its way from Ancient Babylonia to the contemporary American southwest. Wheelwright joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about the resilience of the breast-cancer gene, and how the Jewish Diaspora can be traced...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jerry Cohen’s father opened Economy Candy on Rivington Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side back in 1937, and it remains a paradise for anyone with an appreciation for brightly packaged and affordable confections. In it, one finds shelves overflowing with every candy you can imagine, from Bonomo’s Banana Turkish Taffy to Sifer’s Valomilk. The store also carries seasonal treats, which, at this time of year, means neon-yellow marshmallow Peeps within arm’s reach of packaged Seder mints. On this week’s podcast, Cohen takes unabashed sweet tooth Blake Eskin on a tour of his Passover candy selection. Along the way, they discuss the joys of a non-packaged fruit slice and the future of the candy business and make a brief detour into the forbidden land of chocolate bunnies. [Running time: 7:11.]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Growing up in Tel Aviv, pianist Alon Yavnai was exposed to a range of musical traditions including Middle Eastern, jazz, and Latin (his mother is Argentine). Since then, the Grammy-winner has experimented with other influences, touring with a Cape Verdean dance band, for instance, and collaborating with accomplished musicians such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera. Yavnai’s last album featured his own jazz trio. Now he’s trying his hand with a much bigger ensemble. Working with the Hamburg-based NDR Bigband, Yavnai has put out Shir Ahava, a jazz album that sometimes veers into symphony territory, blurring the lines between genres and suggesting, furthermore, that such lines are immaterial—to those making the music, anyway. Yavnai speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry at his home in Brooklyn about how he first took up the piano, his ventures into big band...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Best known as the general who won the Civil War for the Union, Ulysses S. Grant later became the 18th president of the United States. Now historian Jonathan Sarna weighs in on Grant’s hotly debated legacy from a little-known angle: In When General Grant Expelled the Jews, the latest title from Nextbook Press, Sarna examines the reasons for and impact of Grant’s General Orders No. 11, issued during the war on Dec. 17, 1862, which expelled all Jews from areas then under Grant’s jurisdiction. Although it was quickly rescinded, General Orders No. 11 raised fears among Jews that the centuries-old threat of persecution had reached American shores. Throughout the remainder of his life, Grant went out of his way to show contrition: During his presidency, he promoted Jews to prominent positions in his administration and spoke...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach made a huge splash with his 1999 book, Kosher Sex. The book, along with works including Kosher Sutra and Kosher Adultery, flouts taboos against discussing physical intimacy, desire, and other basic elements of the human experience. Now he’s at it again, taking on perhaps the biggest taboo of all: Jesus. In Kosher Jesus, Boteach argues that Jesus, a faithful adherent and proponent of Judaism, never intended to create a new religion. That turn of events was a corruption of Jesus’ reputation by his followers, argues Boteach, and getting to a place where Jews and Christians alike recognize his Jewishness can only help achieve greater understanding between peoples of different faiths today. Boteach joins Vox Tablet, hosted by Tablet’s Bari Weiss, to talk about his new book. With him on the podcast is Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard University and a longtime friend of Boteach’s, who has his own...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Before Ilya Khodosh went off to graduate school, he spent a lot of time online, especially when he had insomnia or felt anxious. For Khodosh, moving to a new city was a new opportunity to go cold turkey and stop websurfing, which meant no Internet at home. As he explains in this story, which recently won first prize in a Jewish storytelling slam, that deprivation didn’t last long. Ilya Khodosh is currently enrolled in a graduate theater program where he is studying criticism and playwriting. [Running time: 8:11.]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the 19th century, Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi was an esteemed (if controversial) journalist, publisher, singer, and composer in Salonica, a Mediterranean port city whose 2,000-year-old Jewish community was later decimated in the Holocaust. He also wrote the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, which was all but lost until Stanford University history professor Aron Rodrigue found a forgotten copy at Jerusalem’s Jewish National and University Library. Now the memoir is available to all, in an edition introduced and edited by Rodrigue and fellow historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein, and translated by Isaac Jerusalmi: A Jewish Voice From Ottoman Salonica has been published in English in tandem with a digital version of the original soletreo, or Ladino cursive. Rodrigue and Stein join Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about Sa’adi’s life, his obsession...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Actor Antony Sher has won accolades for playing Shylock, Richard III, Cyrano de Bergerac, Macbeth, and Primo Levi. Knighted in 2000, he’s traveled a great distance from his quiet middle-class upbringing in Cape Town, South Africa, and even further from the world of his grandparents, who were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. Now Sher is returning to his roots in Travelling Light, an acclaimed new play by Nicholas Wright being produced by England’s National Theatre. (Selected National Theatre productions are broadcast to movie theaters worldwide via its NT Live program. Additional U.S. screenings of Travelling Light are scheduled for cities including Brooklyn, N.Y., Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, and Minneapolis.) He plays Jacob Bindel, a wealthy timber merchant turned movie producer in an Eastern European town in the early 1900s. Through Bindel, the play explores how so many Jews came...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Ukrainian city of Lviv, also known as L’vov or Lemberg, has a rich but complicated past. On the eve of World War II, the city was home to the third-biggest Jewish population in what was then Poland, behind Warsaw and Lodz. Then came a familiar story: Nazi occupation, pogroms, a ghetto, and concentration camps, and finally the Soviets took over and erased whatever traces of Jewish life remained. The past remains a painful subject in Lviv, and there have been few public efforts to deal with the city’s dark Jewish history. And so a young Ukrainian entrepreneur sensed an opportunity. He opened Under the Golden Rose, a theme restaurant that he says honors the city’s Jewish past. It’s a place where diners are...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Virtuosic mandolin and clarinet player Andy Statman recently released his first album in five years. It’s called Old Brooklyn, and it includes collaborations with a number of top-notch musicians, including Béla Fleck and Paul Shaffer. Perhaps most unusual, though, is the track titled “The Lord Will Provide.” The song is an 18th-century hymn, and this beautifully spare version is a collaboration between Statman, an Orthodox Jew, and country music star Ricky Skaggs, an evangelical Christian. Independent radio producer Stephanie Coleman wondered how this collaboration came about. Here’s the story, as told to Coleman by Statman and Skaggs. [Running time: 10:20.]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Jewish community in Caracas has long been lively, prosperous, tight-knit, and devoted to the country that accepted so many of them as refugees during and after World War II. At its height, it numbered as many as 40,000 people. But in the years since President Hugo Chávez came into office, their sense of well-being has eroded significantly. Like other wealthy Venezuelans, they have seen their economic opportunities diminished. Unlike other wealthy Venezuelans, they’ve been singled out in a rhetoric of class warfare that is sometimes implicitly, other times explicitly, anti-Semitic. In a few cases, that rhetoric has led to violence, as in 2009, when vandals broke into the Mariperez Synagogue, defacing it with anti-Semitic graffiti and destroying property. With their future uncertain, younger Jews are leaving Venezuela in droves, in many cases with their parents and grandparents following in their footsteps. Tablet’s Matthew Fishbane traveled to Caracas to

When Varian Fry, an American journalist, went to Europe in 1941 on behalf of the Emergency Rescue Committee, he went with a mission: to save a group of European artists and intellectuals from the Nazis. His endeavor succeeded. With the help of a small team, he rescued Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, and more than 2,200 others. But at a time when Oskar Schindler and Raul Wallenberg are familiar names, Fry has been largely forgotten. Journalist Dara Horn was determined to tell his story. In a revelatory Kindle Single published today by Tablet Magazine, Horn reports on how Fry came to his rescue work and what became of him after the war. (You can read a preview on Tablet.) But how did this hero decide whom to save in the first place? Horn spoke to Vox Tablet host Sara Ivy about Fry’s exploits, the arguably eugenics-like nature of his mission, the cultural heritage that was...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What if the Holocaust’s most famous victim hadn’t died in Bergen-Belsen but had continued living in hiding, moving furtively from attic to attic, until she found herself a perch in a house in upstate New York? That’s the premise of Hope: A Tragedy, the new novel by Shalom Auslander. It follows Solomon Kugel, the owner of the house, who discovers an ancient, haggard Anne Frank upstairs struggling to finish a follow-up to her famous diary. Kugel is put-upon; his marriage is strained, he flails at work, and his mother, who lives with him, is obsessed with Jewish persecution and pretends that she herself was a victim of the Nazis. In addition, Kugel is in ongoing conversation with a guru who posits that nothing good ever comes of optimism. The novel, Auslander’s first, is both entertaining and disconcerting and Auslander, a

Chani Getter was married off by her ultra-Orthodox family when she was 17. By the time she was 24, she had three children. She was deeply religious and deeply unhappy. She knew she was gay and could not stay in her marriage, but she also knew that she wanted to stay within the ultra-Orthodox community and raise an observant family. She is one of seven women (including a male-to-female transsexual) profiled in DevOUT, a new documentary produced and directed by Diana Neille and Sana Gulzar. Each of the women in the film is attempting to follow the strictures of Orthodoxy while embracing a sexual identity that the religious tradition has labeled an abomination. This film is not covering entirely new turf. In 2001, Sandi Dubowski’s Trembling Before G-d also profiled gay Orthodox men and women. But DevOUT’s subjects are are settling down, raising families, and forcing their communities to come to terms with their existence...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Walt Disney was not a controversial figure during his lifetime. But after his death in 1966, historians began putting forth a variety of disquieting revelations about him: The animator and studio chief had testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, it turned out, and he may have been an FBI informant. He was allegedly interested in cryogenics. And he was reportedly prone to making anti-Semitic remarks. But subsequent biographers disagreed, sparking a long battle over Disney’s legacy. Eric Molinsky worked in the animation industry, and has long wondered not only if the claims of Disney’s anti-Semitism are true but also why they remain a point of fascination and ridicule among cartoonists and others nearly a half-century after his death. For this week’s Vox Tablet, Molinsky, now a radio producer, spoke to an animation historian, a Disney-obsessed playwright, and a fairy-tale scholar in an effort to understand if Disney the man, or Disney’s world view, was truly bad for the...  Se