In the mid 1950s, more than half of the lawyers in New York City were Jewish, and Jewish law students consistently graduated in the top ranks of the best law schools. But the elite crop of New York law firms had firmly established White Anglo Saxon Protestant identities and either didn’t hire Jews at all or didn’t promote them to their partnerships. That situation led to rapid growth of de facto Jewish law firms in the mid-twentieth century. Only a few decades later, there were no longer Jewish firms and WASP firms.Episode 12 of Recognizably Jewish explores this history in detail, including the social, cultural, and business factors that contributed to the rise – and eventual obsolescence – of the New York Jewish law firm.
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Episode 011 - Marc Chagall
There are many Jewish artists who flourished during the 20th century. Mark Rothko. Amedeo Modigliani. Barnett Newman. Diane Arbus. Lee Krasner. Roy Lichtenstein. But no other visual artist was or is as closely associated with Jewish themes and imagery as Marc Chagall. Today on the Recognizably Jewish Podcast, we’ll learn about Chagall’s life, his art, and his place in the Jewish cultural canon.Check out our Substack: recognizablyjewish.substack.com
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Episode 010 - Sholem Aleichem
SHOW NOTESYou may not know who Sholem Aleichem is. Or you may just assume he’s a fusty old Yiddish author. But if you’ve ever laughed at an episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, you should know about Sholem Aleichem. If you’ve ever enjoyed a movie by Mel Brooks or Woody Allen, you should know about Sholem Aleichem. If you’ve ever appreciated a book by Philip Roth or Jonathan Safran Foer, you should know about Sholem Aleichem. If you’ve ever chuckled at a self-deprecating joke told by Rodney Dangerfield or Joan Rivers or Jon Stewart, you should know about Sholem Aleichem.For this second episode in our informal series leading up to an episode about Fiddler on the Roof, we’ll learn about Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, whose tragicoming writing has been called the “anchoring work of the modern Jewish canon.” SOURCESAlisa Solomon, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (https://a.co/d/f9zpnBO)https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1142https://blogs.loc.gov/catbird/2020/05/sholem-aleichem-the-yiddish-mark-twain/https://tikvah.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Tikvah_StudyGuide_Wisse_v3.pdfhttps://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/discover/yiddish-literature/sholem-aleichem-conversation-ruth-wisse-and-davidhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VouWU91olAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMhLaVUb4oc
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Episode 009 - Documenting Survivors (with Dana Arschin and Brian Marcus)
Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Episode 9 of the Recognizably Jewish podcast is a deeply meaningful discussion with two people who have devoted their talents to documenting Holocaust survivors.
Dana Arschin is an award-winning journalist and the official Storyteller for the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. She is also the proud granddaughter of an Auschwitz Concentration Camp survivor, her Poppy.
Brian Marcus is a renowned event photographer and the third-generation leadership of Fred Marcus Photography. He’s the co-author, with June Hersh, of the book Still Here: Inspiration From Survivors & Liberators of the Holocaust. Fred Marcus, Brian’s grandfather and the eponymous founder of the studio, was a survivor of Buchenwald.
I talked to Dana and Brian about their work and about how Holocaust survivorship, and narratives of survivorship more generally, fit within the broader Jewish cultural rubric. Self-identification as a chosen but oppressed people is nothing new to Jewishness. But in the 20th century, the specific idea of “never forget” became an ingrained part of Jewish cultural identity. It’s a uniting feature that applies regardless of your religious practices or political or world views. To make “never forget” a reality requires dedicated work from documentarians of all kinds. Dana and Brian are two such documentarians, recording and celebrating the stories of the survivors themselves.
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Episode 008 - Klezmer
When you hear klezmer music, you know it’s Jewish. You can feel it. But why? It’s not like klezmer melodies, instrumentation, or styles are prescribed by the Torah. The answer, of course, is culture. Klezmer has been a part of Jewish culture for hundreds of years.
Listen to today’s episode of Recognizably Jewish to learn all about the history and characteristics of klezmer and how it became so deeply enmeshed in Jewish culture.
My primary source for this episode/post is Yale Strom’s The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore Paperback. If you want to learn even more deeply about klezmer, you should definitely read it.
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