David Kaufmann
By David Kaufmann
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News Cartoons Counter Swastika Shock
Not everyone would look at Scotch Tape and think of snails, but Sam Gross did and came up with the most popular cartoon in his 50-year career. One snail looks at another and says, “I don’t care if she’s a tape dispenser. I love her.” It’s a high concept sight gag and it’s all in…
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Culture A History of Us: ‘The Jewish Americans’ Hits the High Notes
The Jewish Americans PBS, January 9, 16, 23 The Jewish Americans By Beth S. Wenger Doubleday, 388 pages,$40. About halfway through the first installment of David Grubin’s three-part documentary “The Jewish Americans,” a voice-over reads an 1862 letter from a northern Jewish officer, one Marcus Spiegel. In it, Spiegel explains to his wife why it…
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Culture The Parody’s Over: Whither Our Era’s Mickey Katz or Allan Sherman?
In the 11 months since it was released on YouTube, Leah Kauffman’s parody of Justin Timberlake, “My Box in a Box,” has been viewed more than 4 million times. Her “I’ve Got a Crush…on Obama” — out since June 2007 — has been hit close to 5 million times. Like Kauffman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert,…
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Culture Even Zhlubs Can Turn Lemons Into Lemonade
The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories By Max Apple The Johns Hopkins University Press, 184 pages, $19.95. When it comes to Max Apple, what’s not to like? Over the past three decades, in six books and two screenplays, he has shown himself to be a funny guy. And he has always been —…
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News Jewish Dog Tales
An elderly friend who likes to pretend he comes from the old country but in fact comes from Detroit tells me that my two dogs make me look, well, goyish. He’s got 3,000 years of Jewish opinion to back him up. Dogs don’t do so well in the Tanakh or in the Talmud. To maintain,…
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Culture One of Most Relevant Thinkers You’ve Never Heard Of
The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions By Christian Wiese Brandeis University Press, 292 pages, $50. Like most things German, the philosophy of Hans Jonas is complicated. But its main thrust can be summed up by its leading moral imperative: “Act so that the effects of your action do not destroy the future…
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Culture Heretic with Fries
Foreskin’s Lament By Shalom Auslander Riverhead, 320 pages, $24.95 Consider the poor foreskin: an object of desire for a few, a matter of indifference for many and anathema to the Jews. Like bacon and lobster, it serves as the very definition of treyf. Its rejection is the primordial sign of the Covenant. Consider, then, Shalom…
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Culture Carrot and Shtick
For many years of my life, I worried about American poetry and German philosophy. Now that I have kids, I worry about more pressing things. Like religion. Like ethnicity. Like cartoons. Since it’s August, and everyone is on vacation, my editor is feeling more permissive than usual. It seems like a good time to pose…
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