Paul Berman
Tablet Magazine
Contact Paul
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Paul:
Adonis in Jerusalem –
This is the second of a two-part essay on Saul Bellow in Jerusalem. Read part one here. *** I have become an Adonis-reader. Sometimes I have read him in English translations from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, Samuel Hazo, and other translators. But mostly I have turned to the French versions. Adonis was born in … → Read More
Bellow in Jerusalem –
The only full-length work of nonfiction that Saul Bellow ever wrote is a book called To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, published in 1976, which is a scrapbook journal of a few months he spent in Israel, together with commentaries on his apposite readings, reports on conversations with Middle East scholars, and recollections of … → Read More
The Blindspot in Bernie Sanders' Anti-Semitism Manifesto –
Bernie Sanders’ curious little manifesto on anti-Semitism in Jewish Currents on Nov. 11 reminds me why I could not possibly support the man—and why I sometimes feel a stab of regret about it. There is an impulsively decent quality in him that erupts now and then in rebellious outbursts of unexpected political principle, typically in ways … → Read More
'Porgy and Bess' and America, Then and Now –
The Metropolitan Opera in New York is presenting George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess this season, and a couple of essays in the Playbill, by Matt Dobkin and by Helen Greenwald, remind us of an unusual feature of the opera, which is Gershwin’s insistence on an all-black singing cast. He composed the score over the course … → Read More
Virgil and the Homeless Nations –
Virgil died on Sept. 21, 19 B.C.E., which I took to mean, for one misguided minute, that on Sept. 21st of our own year, 2019 C.E., we were going to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the event. But, because B.C.E. is not the same as C.E., and indeed stands in inverse relation to it, the … → Read More
Elizabeth Warren in Washington Square –
Elizabeth Warren’s oration in New York’s Washington Square last night had me, as they say, at go—though I do have to wonder if, in the entire crowd of several thousand, with its New York University students, professors, staffers, hipsters, random citizens, drug dealers, and its committed Democrats and Warren volunteers, anyone at all responded the … → Read More
Was B. Traven a German Jew? –
Was B. Traven, the proletarian writer with a much-disputed identity, a German Jew? And not just any German Jew, was his name Moritz Rathenau, and was he the illegitimate son of Emil Rathenau, the creator of the German electrical company and one of the principal industrialists of Germany at the turn of the 20th century? … → Read More
Is the U.S. Constitution Pro-Slavery? –
I. Several months ago a slender volume on slavery and the United States Constitution by my friend Sean Wilentz waded ashore in Massachusetts, courtesy of Harvard University Press, found a friendly reception at Harvard itself, fought its way inland, captured a lower hill at The New York Times Book Review, penetrated the swamplands of The … → Read More
Should We Love Our Country? –
This week is the 4th of July, and should we love our country? Richard Blanco was President Barack Obama’s inaugural poet in 2013, and, although I do not claim to be a Richard Blanco fan—his sappiness is not my sappiness—I do admire the title of his new poetry collection, How to Love a Country, for … → Read More
Tales of the Jewish Working Class, Part 3: Anarchism and the Multicultural Joys of New York –
This is the third part of an extended history of the anarchists and the Jews. Read part 1 here, and part 2 here. I. Social Democratic trade unionism was a success in 20th-century America, materially and, as it were, gustatorially. Its successes were tasty and imaginative. It was especially a success in New York. Supremely it … → Read More
Tales of the Jewish Working Class, Part 1: The Ancient Dream of the Jewish Left –
This is the first part of an extended history of the anarchists and the Jews. Read parts 2 and 3 here tomorrow and Thursday. I. The YIVO Institute on 16th Street in New York held a conference not long ago on the dusty theme of “Yiddish Anarchism: New Scholarship on a Forgotten Tradition,” and, whoa!—some … → Read More
The Tears of Quasimodo: Victor Hugo and the Ideals of Progress –
Notre-Dame is a thing, but it is also a thought, which is why, as soon as the fire broke out, any number of commentators began speaking about Victor Hugo, who invested the cathedral with an exceptionally large and wonderful thought, and gave it eternal life. Notre-Dame is not, after all, merely the landscape of Hugo’s … → Read More
An Enemy of the People: Finkielkraut, Attacked and Defended –
I. The Yellow Vest sidewalk mini-riot against Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher, in Paris a few weeks ago—widely and even internationally reported in the press and visible here—deserves an additional commentary, apart from the obvious remark made by many people at the time, to wit, that manias against the Jews have gotten out of hand … → Read More
Class Struggle and the Dreamlife of Trump National –
At age 16, I graduated from mowing the neighbors’ lawns and watering their plants to my first real job, which was clearing tables and washing dishes at a college cafeteria, and then to a still better job, with looser hours and wider vistas, as golf caddy at Trump National Golf Club Westchester, known in those … → Read More
Two Kinds of Hatred in the Age of Trump –
There is a spider crawling along the floor mat, William Hazlitt tells us (in an immortal essay from 1826 called “On the Pleasure of Hating”), and he hates it. Hatred does not lead him to violence. He is an evolved and superior creature, in that regard, or so he says. Lesser persons—“a child, a woman, a … → Read More
Paul Berman Addresses His Critics on 'the Left' –
“Do we have to?” The estimable Tim Shenk, co-editor of Dissent magazine, puts this question to me. I have made the case in Tablet that patriotism ought to be a starting point for the American left, and Shenk waxes skeptical. The waxing extends to another point, as well: “But can’t it just be a country?” … → Read More
The Philosophers and the American Left: Third in a Series –
I. The American left, which has sometimes been poor in institutions, has always been wealthy in political philosophy—and you can see the wealth and its significance in two books of our own moment, one by the late Richard Rorty and the other by Michael Walzer. Perhaps Rorty’s book is not completely of our moment. The … → Read More
The Foreign Policy of the American Left: Michael Walzer and Bernie Sanders –
I. What does the American left believe about world affairs? Everyone knows what the American left believes about domestic affairs. The left believes that social conscience ought to be elevated into policy; extreme inequalities of wealth and social advantages ought to be narrowed; trade unions ought to be encouraged; idiotic bigotries ought to be combated; … → Read More
Will the American Left Follow Britain and France Into Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism? –
I. In the early spring of this year, an angry dispute broke out in the United Kingdom between the mainstream Jewish communal organizations and the leader of the radical left, currently head of the Labour Party, who is Jeremy Corbyn; and a couple of days later, a roughly similar dispute broke out in France between … → Read More
The Kristallnacht Election Shows America Who We Are –
Tuesday’s election was a plebiscite on nativist racism, which emerged looking rather strong, and we delude ourselves by imagining anything else. The election was a plebiscite because Donald Trump’s personality was primary in everyone’s thinking, regardless of what people may have told their exit-pollsters. And nativist racism was the question at issue because the President … → Read More