20 Comments
Mar 19Liked by Aviya Kushner

Zlateh the Goat and the other stories in that children's book were always favorites in my household, along with Gimpel the Fool...

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Mar 17Liked by Aviya Kushner

Art Historian here -- After Oct 7, I started teaching Marc Chagall and 25 years of ignoring him.

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Aviya, didn't Singer use a typewriter with Yiddish keys to write his books? I'll have to put this book on my already long reading list for this year.

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Mar 14Liked by Aviya Kushner

Don’t forget his lesser known but equally impressive (my parents thought even better) brother I.J.Singer.

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This is great. I learned so much. Thank you so much for sharing.

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Mar 13·edited Mar 13Liked by Aviya Kushner

I have taught IBSinger and have had to explain such things as why the coins that drop of out the phone in A Day in Coney Island is a miracle. "It's like less than two dollars, another student said. His work is difficult for students not steeped in religion and spirituality.

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Mar 13Liked by Aviya Kushner

Aviya, I love that you're reading Singer and sharing it with your students. The short story, Teibele and her Demon, and the novel, Shosha are two of my favorites. Thank you for turning a light on his immense work.

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What an interesting essay! I delved into Singer's short stories during the pandemic and was awed and charmed by In My Father's Court. The silence around stories and fiction by Jewish writers is terribly alarming, a tacit anti-Semitism that relies on the passage of time to remove these writers from our shared conversation about literature.

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