Vox Tablet

It all started back in 2001, when Sarajevo-born folk singer Flory Jagoda invited roughly a dozen other Sephardim in the Washington area to join her for conversation over burekas and bumuelos (fritters, or doughnuts). More specifically, she invited them for conversation in Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, the language spoken by Jews in medieval Spain and later in the far-flung lands to which they fled after the expulsion in 1492.

Today, the language is all but forgotten, except by those like Jagoda who spoke it growing up. The group has grown to include more than 20 participants. At their monthly meetings—which...

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When some of the Tablet staff started talking about Hanukkah, it became apparent how little we could assert about the holiday’s particulars. Some knew it involved violence. Others that there was eight days’ worth of oil to light a menorah. Still others that the word “Hanukkah” means dedication. But how did those elements fit together in an origin story?

To find out, we asked Tablet readers and friends to send in their take of the Hanukkah story. Many people obliged us—you can find a terrific mash-up of their answers here:

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David Ben-Gurion looms so large in Israel’s mythology, it's like he's George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln all rolled into one—the country’s Founding Father and the architect of many of its earliest and most crucial achievements. But maybe the comparison with America’s greatest presidents is flawed, for while we love nothing more than to discover the humanity of our historical leaders—Washington chopping down that cherry tree, Jefferson and his indiscretions, Lincoln’s melancholia—Ben-Gurion does not lend himself to such intimacy. He appears to be as inscrutable as he is inevitable, there in every major juncture in Israeli history yet never really familiar.

That is, until...

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Archie Bunker, George Jefferson, Mary Hartman, Maude Findlay are just a handful of the iconic characters Norman Lear created for television. In his storied career, Lear tackled abortion, cancer, racism, rape, abuse, interracial relationships, single motherhood, alcoholism, and poverty—subjects many shows today won’t even consider as viable fodder for entertainment. Now 92 years old, Lear got his start writing bits for showmen like Danny Thomas and Jerry Lewis before moving into television and film and then embarking on a second career as an activist (he co-founded People for the American Way).

Now Lear has moved into a new medium—print. He has written

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At the turn of the 20th century, Viennese culture experienced a golden age, with the Art Nouveau movement, and the revolutionary music of composers like Mahler, Strauss, and Schoenberg. At the same time, Sigmund Freud‘s theories about dreams and desires were finding expression in art, literature, and music.

This week a pair of recitals titled “Art Song on the Couch: Lieder in Freud’s Vienna” promises to transport audiences to the salons of that era. The program was conceived and curated by Steven Blier...

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Writer Tillie Olsen died in 2007, at age 94. During her life, she worked at many jobs—as a union organizer, waitress, hotel maid, and factory worker, among others—and, with her husband, raised four daughters. That didn’t leave a lot of time to write. But once Olsen got to it, publishing her first story at the age of 43—she made a name for herself, writing elliptical, realist short stories and often angry essays taking on the plight of working people, social injustice, and the many ways that creativity is stifled.

Several years before she died, Olsen recruited her grandson Jesse Olsen Bay to help her move out of her San...

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Are Jews still “the people of the book”? Are Israelis? What does that even mean today? In the third episode of Israel Story, we’ve got three stories that all revolve around people who rescue books, chase after books, or otherwise allow books to determine their destiny—from a Yiddish book collector based in the Tel Aviv central bus station to a lonely college student to bibliophiles in search of the lost fragments of the Aleppo Codex. And we chat with Israeli writer Etgar Keret, who has some original thoughts on where the “people of the book” tagline came from. (Listen to the full episode

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In 2007, journalist Sarah Wildman discovered a hidden cache of letters in her grandfather’s home office. By that time, her grandfather Karl was no longer living, but he had been a strong presence for most of her life—a worldly bon vivant and successful doctor whose smooth escape from Vienna in 1938 was part of the family lore. The letters, written mostly in German, came from people he’d left behind—people Wildman had never heard of before and, in particular, one young Jewish woman named Valy, whose letters made clear that she and Karl had been much more than friends. The letters—sent between 1939 and 1941—overflowed with love and yearning, but also conveyed that her...

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