Month: December 2012

Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

West Side Story – Prologue

A flashback to the Jets and the Sharks

 

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Sholem Aleichem – Penguin Classics On Air – Penguin Group (USA)

Discover this – you won’t regret it!

In this episode of Penguin Classics On Air, Elda Rotor introduces Penguin Classics editor John Siciliano and his interview with Aliza Shevrin, translator of TEVYE THE DAIRYMAN AND MOTL THE CANTOR’S SON, as well as WANDERING STARS, about the life and works of Sholem Aleichem, the difference between FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and TEVYE THE DAIRYMAN, Yiddish humor, life, and culture from Russia to the Lower East Side, and what to do with five (or is it three? Or seven?) daughters.

Sholem Aleichem – Penguin Classics On Air – Penguin Group (USA).

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Posted in Cross Cultural Comments

Desire and Judgment

In this week’s New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, talking about sex and politics, reminds us of the Yiddish saying which can be roughly translated like this:

“When passion walks in the door, reason jumps out the window.”

The reverse can also be true.

“When reality walks in the door, desire escapes through the chimney.”

Desire is not subject to the language of judicious choice, or it would not be desire, with a language all its own. The point of lust, not to put too fine a point on it, is that it lures us to do dumb stuff, and the fact that the dumb stuff gets done is continuing proof of its power. (by Adam Gopnik, published in The New Yorker, November 26, 2012)

This article was referring to another of the “scandals” about high ranking officials having what are known as extra-marital affairs. In this specific case, it was a general in the army. 

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