Berichten door Jonathan Gill

Over Jonathan Gill
Jonathan Gill received his PhD from Columbia University in American literature and has taught literature, history, and writing at Columbia University, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, Fordham University, the City College of New York, and Amsterdam University College. He specialises in post-World War II art, film and literature, African-American history and culture, experimental and vernacular musics, the counterculture of the 1960s, the literature of immigration and the cultures of intolerance. He has also taught Yiddish at the University of Amsterdam, and has written and lectured widely on Judaism and Jewish culture. His book "Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History, From Dutch Village to Capital of Black America" (Grove/Atlantic 2011), has been a New York Times best-seller. In 2020 he published "Hollywood Double Agent" (Abrams, hardcover 9781419740091) on espionage in Hollywood during the Cold War.
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Verhalen

Reisbrief uit een jodenvrij land

17 oktober 2022 Jonathan Gill 1

Tijdens zijn sabbatical reist Jonathan Gill met zijn vrouw door Zuidoost Azië. Hij stelde voor zijn gedachten over hoe de Hoge Feestdagen te vieren in den verre met ons te delen. Het pakte anders uit… Beste Wanda, Nooit beginnen met excuses, dat zeg ik altijd tegen mijn studenten. Toch moet ik mijn excuses aanbieden dat ik zo lang geen contact met je heb opgenomen. Want zijn reizigers niet gevrijwaard van veel wetten en regels, verplichtingen … [Lees verder]

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Geschiedenis

The Broken Sword: Anti-Semitism in History, Anti-Semitism as History

17 augustus 2022 Jonathan Gill 0

If a short history of anti-semitism tops 300 pages, what does the complete history look like? The answer might be found at the conclusion of the Gospel of John, perhaps the founding text of Christian anti-semitism, which imagines a book that is bigger than the world itself. But even that wouldn’t solve the problem of putting a full understanding of the subject between covers, because, as Theodor Adorno, no stranger to anti-semitism, warns us: The … [Lees verder]

Ma'yan Haggadah kaft
Nieuws

Rational Haggadah happens to be an ultra-right politicization of Pesach

6 april 2022 Jonathan Gill 1

Dennis Prager’s The Rational Passover Haggadah poses the liberal media are a greater threat to Western democracies than Russia There are those who object to the politicization of Passover. In particular gestures made by many Jewish communities – certainly most non-Orthodox families and kehillot – towards justice issues traditionally associated with progressive politics, more specifically the marginalization of the disempowered and the disenfranchised. But like it or not, adjusting the text of the seder to … [Lees verder]

tekening Ruth Wisse door Primo Gill
Opinie

Orthodox Heresies: Ruth Wisse’s Unsentimental Education

6 januari 2022 Jonathan Gill 1

review Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation by Ruth Wisse It’s so much easier when one’s adversaries are not only wrong, but stupid, and best of all, bad. The legendary Yiddishist Ruth Wisse’s most recent book, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, offers us no such comfort.  Yiddish like a religion Born Ruth Roskies in 1936 in Czernowitz, Romania (currently Chernivtsi, Ukraine), Wisse fled with her parents … [Lees verder]