Don’t talk to me about dead Gazan children.

I am done explaining.

For the past 15 months, everywhere I go people find a way to bring up dead children in Gaza.

Since October 7th, the moment I mention that I am Israeli, that’s where the conversation immediately turns.

These justice-seeking strangers make sure to inform me that war is wrong, and that the killing of children is immoral. This is usually followed by a generous pause, so I can prove my humanity by agreeing that, yes, it's tragic.

It is exh…

Yesterday was the birthday of Soviet Jewish writer Vasily Grossman (1905-1964), who is little known in the US but was a writer of both literary and historical consequence. I’m currently rereading his greatest novel, Life and Fate. Here are a few lines from one of the chapters I read last night (Part 2, Chapter 31, Robert Chandler transla…

Thanks for an excellent article.

I was in an Ivy League PhD program in Russian literature back in the 1990s. At that point, we were conscious -- and almost universally grateful -- that we were a department unlike the other major lit departments (French, English, Comp Lit, etc.). They had largely moved away from studying literature and wer…