Welcome to Litsy!

“There are no wrong books. What‘s wrong is the fear of them.”

Just watched the 60 Minutes segment on the effort to ban books, nationwide and in Beaufort, SC. I loved the fact community members volunteered to read the books in question!

Proof is in the pudding about motives. Has nothing to do with liberty and everything about control. The school district already has a form parents can submit to restrict access for THEIR OWN CHILDREN.

Bari Weiss is a journalist, writer and editor. This thought-provoking polemic was written in the aftermath of the 2018 terrorist shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue where she had her bat mitzvah and her anger at that atrocity permeates it. Unfortunately the valid points she makes about anti-semitism on both the left and the right get lost as she bangs her anti-liberal drum and she ignores completely the role of her own free speech movement.

#auldlangspine @TheBookHippie @monalyisha
Late as always with finishing this challenge, but I thought this was a very good essay collection. Each confronts aspects of antisemitism in a variety of contexts. My two favorites were on bits of history that aren't that widely known (an early 20th century Russian Jewish community in freezing Harbin, China, and Varian Fry, a journalist who rescued famous artists being persecuted by the Nazis) 👇

Last book of 2023, read in one sitting. Sand raises the pressing question: is there any non-racial basis for secular Jewish identity today? (His answer is no.) Fresh, provocative and necessary. Some parts I‘m still wrestling with, and I think ultimately Bertell Ollman‘s “Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People” resonated more w/ me bc of how Ollman squares the circle of Jewish identity w/ communist universalism.

HF from the author of the amazing book The Night Diary! It‘s 1967 and 12 yo Ariel Goldberg is bereft when her sister Leah elopes with a Hindu student, disappointing her parents by marrying outside the Jewish faith, then becomes pregnant. Ariel and her best friend hit the road in search of Leah and hoping to restore family harmony…

#DashingDecember Day 6
#Rushathon Day 21

@Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES

Finished up several more children‘s books! #wintergames #ghostsofxmas @BookwormAHN

This had an enlightening summary of anti-Semitism in Europe up to the mid-20th century, followed by a sociopolitical analysis of the then contemporary (1938) position of Jews globally, increasingly overshadowed by Naziism and the far right, a sadly over-optimistic section on the possibility of peaceful coexistence of Jews and "Arabs" in Palestine, and a sadly prescient warning of what might be in the immediate future if Hitler remained in power.⬇️

"The addition to any country of a body of young, strong, active and industrious immigrants with the probability of a long life before them (as the [Jewish] refugees from Germany and Austria in the main are) is clearly an asset, particularly to a land which, like England, is faced with an imminent fall in population. As workers and consumers, moreover, they must add to its economic activity, rather than compete (as is generally imagined) in... ⬇️

Necessary read.