tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:09:28 +00009/11TraumaMemoryDisasterBlanchotCardozoJudaismShavuotThere is no stop, there is no interval between dreaming and waking. In this sense, it is possible to say: never, dreamer, can you awake . . . -- Maurice Blanchothttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Monica)Blogger199125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-1684902326189820543Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:05:00 +00002012-01-20T12:09:28.856-08:00I'm giving a talk called "Dropping the H(olocaust)-Bomb: The Ethics of Post-9/11 Comedy" tomorrow night at a BINA salon. Somehow I've managed to transition from midrash to comedy, but the Holocaust is still present. UPDATE: You can watch the talk here.http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/11/dropping-holocaust-bomb-ethics-of-post.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-6329177011786476499Mon, 03 Oct 2011 07:58:00 +00002011-10-03T00:58:54.090-07:00Last year at this time (Rosh Hashanah) I wrote about the sweetness of a new year. I believed that happiness must be inevitable for us all because there was possibility, coming in the form of a calendar yet unblemished. I imagined that the hope conjured up by those without hope was something to which I too could aspire. I knew it was going to be a sweet year. And it was. But sometimes sweetness http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/10/reading-for-wound.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-3850115484755257679Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:25:00 +00002011-09-19T23:35:12.639-07:00DisasterBlanchotMemoryTrauma9/11 The disaster . . . it is the limit of writing. Only now, in the earliest hours of September 12, 2011, do I venture to write anything. The day before seemed to me little more than the culmination of our collective desire to write something, anything--to pretend to remember, to commemorate. How can we remember what we don't know? Anyone who fancies himself a writer of any kind had been thinkinghttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/09/nothing-de-scribed.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8045507275710666144Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:08:00 +00002011-08-22T10:09:43.090-07:00I've reviewed Rudolph Herzog's book Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany over at The New Republic. Read it here.http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/08/hitler-and-humor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-581606786570113234Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:17:00 +00002011-07-24T14:00:46.199-07:00I was reading someone's life just the other day, and I found myself lingering in the most melancholy of moments. The moments of sorrow--both real and imagined--harbored the sharpest insights. They caused the woman to come alive. She was unequivocally her in these dark flashes. I tried not to listen too carefully, but I heard her tell the man by whom she felt betrayed: "These tears are not for youhttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/07/love-and-other-origins.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-6286117103015068994Sat, 11 Jun 2011 07:36:00 +00002011-06-11T02:05:25.467-07:00JudaismShavuotCardozoWhen a tradition is in good order, it is always partially constituted by an argument about the goods the pursuit of which gives to that tradition its particular point and purpose. --Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. On the first night of Shavuot this week, I went to a synagogue in my neighborhood to hear Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo give a talk called "The Unfrozen Torah: Rethinking Halacha andhttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/06/two-ways-of-splitting-fish.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5564016625246839401Fri, 27 May 2011 08:25:00 +00002011-05-27T02:19:27.662-07:00I taught Ehud Havazelet's Bearing the Body this week in my Holocaust Film and Literature course. And, like last time I taught the novel, I'm compelled to write about it. When I put this course together I knew that I would have to address the perspective of what we call the Second Generation survivor--the child of a Holocaust survivor, exposed to the terrible trauma by proxy, everything secondhandhttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/05/show-me-your-face.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-6810475256842307835Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:14:00 +00002011-03-28T04:58:46.110-07:00A shameful confession: I have carried on a long-time love affair with all things of the Hebrew persuasion without really knowing the language. A page of Talmud is beautiful to me--mysterious, compelling, intriguing. And it speaks to me. Or, at least, my translations and transliterations speak to me, read Talmud to me. Perhaps that space between the original and the translation also speaks to me, http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/03/intimacy-of-language.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8344332296186650816Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:20:00 +00002011-02-24T03:41:27.329-08:00We often want something. And more often, at least for some of us, we savor the sensation of wanting detached from knowing. In other words--we want something, but we don't know what.On these occasions there are two writers to whom I turn: Edmond Jabes and Rainer Maria Rilke. Every once in a while it will be something or someone else, but most often it's one of these two. I pull out a book and justhttp://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/02/jews-and-writers-on-impossibility.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-4037543949579022437Fri, 21 Jan 2011 04:24:00 +00002011-01-20T20:48:05.156-08:00<!--StartFragment--> <!--StartFragment--> Beckett is the last writer to shape the way we think and see. After him, the major work involves midair explosions and crumbled buildings. This is the new tragic narrative. –Don DeLillo, Mao II In between various other projects--finishing my book manuscript, finishing a Woody Allen article, prepping for my German cinema course, creating my new http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/01/ethics-and-tragic-face-of-literature-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8833462351146413559Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:51:00 +00002011-01-14T18:59:33.462-08:00Awake inside the dark...This is how the verse begins--the second verse of one of my favorite songs (video below).Yes, and sometimes I do. Just the other night I awoke in the middle of the dark. Something was pulling me down to the center of something. My head, leaning off one side of the bed, felt a magnet's warmth. I saw a deep pool of blood, my fingers just barely missing it, but tracing its http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/01/awake-inside-dark.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8416097232604094263Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:38:00 +00002011-01-14T12:39:25.823-08:00It's time to register for the 2011 LimmudLA Conference in February. Love this event. You'll never be the same.http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2011/01/limmudla-2011-conference.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-7128951904365234580Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:52:00 +00002010-12-15T02:48:41.023-08:00I'm reading Nicole Krauss's 2005 novel The History of Love. So far the novel is comprised primarily of one narrator's obsessive list of ideas and moments from her life--many annotated with detailed descriptions, others left to stand on their own. Item number six reads: "MY BROTHER BELIEVES IN GOD." The description that follows gives us a brief account of a nine-year-old boy called Bird, after he http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/12/inscribing-un-inscribable.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5255924107248709007Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:23:00 +00002010-11-11T13:45:17.360-08:00I've been ill recently, which means I've had the excuse to lie in my bed and watch films on Netflix. One of the films I watched was Summer Hours with Juliette Binoche. I tend to like films that do a fine job of fleshing out the complexity of family relationships, especially when it's a family of multiple siblings. Rachel Getting Married is another one that does it right. But very few films do it http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/10/memory-and-residue.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5313495478229886448Tue, 21 Sep 2010 06:08:00 +00002010-09-22T01:51:43.278-07:00This year's Kol Nidre service was especially meaningful for me. There's a difference between attending a service because you know you're expected to be there, and actually going and feeling like you were meant to be there--that you're in the right place. I went by myself to a minyan at Beth Jacob, a modern Orthodox shul here in the Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles; it was called "I Wish I Got http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/09/striving-to-regret.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-7238518248576812866Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:38:00 +00002010-08-28T13:15:40.668-07:00"I let just a little bit of fall in through my window this morning," she said. On one of the final days of August, the day parted just long enough to give her a glimpse of what lies ahead. She likes it when the air is sharp and swirling: bits of memory in shards, cutting and falling in turns, working their way in again. Her skin is wired. On the other side of the bay window in her coastal http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/08/her-skin-is-wired.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-991256248755727944Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:48:00 +00002010-08-20T01:20:57.313-07:00We define ourselves through the lens of tragedy. We see our faces reflected in the wake of disaster. Destruction tells us that we live, and it tells us how to live. Or how we should have lived. And it feels sickening to me--sickening that everything we do, say, and are must be refracted off of a traumatic moment.This is what I realized today.I was sitting in an orientation at a university where http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/08/post-happiness.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-8324663549087203650Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:08:00 +00002010-07-30T04:11:09.120-07:00I've been reading Ben Greenman's short story collection What He's Poised to Do. I've been reading it off and on for the past week, which one can do because it's almost like a series of letters or dispatches, most of which have nothing to do with each other since they are narrated by different people in different eras. But they're all connected by a similar emphasis on the text, and the http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/07/misreadings.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-4898934225272913505Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:04:00 +00002010-07-26T21:13:50.594-07:00Anyone know this couple? The photograph was taken by Jay Karas at the Bonnaroo music festival, and it's such a great photo that he wants to find this couple and give it to them. He's even started a Facebook Group that already has nearly 2,000 members, and now the page has become a bit of a social networking experiment. I've been betting that Monday night (tonight!) would be the night that the http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/07/missing-identity-unidentified-bonnaroo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-3400455610650611884Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:59:00 +00002010-07-05T04:04:52.830-07:00I'm sitting at a desk in my hotel room in Toulouse, France, putting the final touches on my presentation for tomorrow: "Interrupting Violence: The Photography of Adi Nes and Zion Ozeri." It always happens, without fail, that I work and write so much better when I leave my own space and sit in a room with only the barest of necessities. With everything removed, I always feel again the joy of http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/07/interruptions.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-764353641803142016Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:17:00 +00002010-06-22T23:45:56.196-07:00I've been working on my presentation for the North American Levinas Society conference, which will be held in Toulouse, France, July 3-9. The conference centers thematically on Levinas's Difficult Freedom--a collection of his essays on Judaism, and a book that gets a reading from me simply because of its magnificent title. It's easier, and cleaner, to long for freedom, rather than experience it. http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/06/fracture-for-fracture.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-181455164016478761Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:07:00 +00002010-06-08T03:01:57.873-07:00I'm reading Alex Epstein's Blue Has No South:He never told her that once, he woke up above the ocean without a shred of a memory of who he was. When he landed, he adjusted to local time the watch that he wore on his right hand...passed the border inspection, and began collecting information about his life: his name on a passport under an outdated photo, his unshaven face reflected in the http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/06/we-are-but-replicas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-988383331949491882Fri, 21 May 2010 08:05:00 +00002010-05-25T01:50:56.101-07:00Just a few days ago was the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which marks the giving of Torah, or commandment, to the people. Shavuot has been--at least for the past 3 or 4 years--my favorite Jewish holiday because it is all about two things: staying up all night (literally) and learning Torah and eating cheesecake. That's pretty much it for me in this life.But...this notion of Commandment http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/05/learning-in-reverse.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-872863072475087796Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:10:00 +00002010-04-28T14:37:00.877-07:00I'm moving this week, to be closer to the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Having spent so many years in different grad schools and programs over the past decade--Loyola Marymount, Purdue, Cornell--I've moved back and forth a lot. Moving my life from one community to another has become routine. But even though the movers will arrive tomorrow morning, I find myself just sitting in my place, looking http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/04/im-moving-this-week-to-be-closer-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26622588.post-5130489721271433794Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:31:00 +00002010-04-12T00:41:18.116-07:00Every couple of months I return to this moment. Or perhaps the truth is that I perpetually inhabit this moment. The photograph, I fear--taken in New York City--captures the essence of something very close to who I am. Samuel Beckett certainly got it right when he intimated, in Waiting for Godot, that we are all just waiting for the appearance of our own death. Life is comprised only of holding "http://strangledsleep.blogspot.com/2010/04/joy-cometh-in-mourning.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Monica)0