Zackary Sholem Berger is a frequent contributor to the Forward and the Yiddish Forward. He lives in Baltimore.
Zackary Sholem Berger
By Zackary Sholem Berger
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News In Memory of a One-man Yiddish Empire
Mordkhe Schaechter, a linguist, lexicographer and rebbe of secular Yiddishists, died February 15. He was 79. I became attracted to Yiddish when I was growing up in Louisville, Ky. Sitting in the back of Ms. Donsky’s German class, I often encountered Schaechter’s name while stumbling through week-old issues of the Forverts. On the basis of…
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Culture Defining the ‘WikiJew’
Who is a Jew? Let’s see what Wikipedia says about it. Or, rather, what the Wikipedias say, since the online encyclopedia is available in more than 100 languages. The answer to our question in English neither offends nor omits anyone: “[A] follower of Judaism, or [a member] of the Jewish people, an ethno-religious group descended…
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News Bidding the Classroom Adieu
For some people, 12 years of school is enough. Add four years of college and 10 years of a long M.D.-Ph.D. program. Finally, at the end of all that, I can say that I’m no longer a student. I’m ready to enjoy the benefits of my new station in life: sleeping late, meals at my…
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News Stomach Cancer: Venturing Into the Belly of the Beast
I’ve come to Fuzhou, a city of 5 or 6 million people in southern China, to help along some research into gastric cancer. Fujian Province, of which Fuzhou is the capital, records more cases of the cancer than anywhere else in the world. Fuzhou isn’t a bad city to call home for six weeks —…
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News Springing Into Action
In the hospital where I spent my critical care rotation, the patients in the intensive care unit (“the unit,” for short) weren’t as sick as those in some other hospitals. They were all more or less aware and oriented to their surroundings. You could have a conversation with them. On one not particularly busy day,…
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Culture Allegra Goodman’s Science Fiction
Intuition By Allegra Goodman The Dial Press, 352 pages, $25. * * *| In her new novel, “Intuition,” Allegra Goodman invokes the world of medical research with the convincing detail of an insider and an outsider’s penetrating gaze. The book is a modern epic, a slimmed-down, suspenseful version of one of the 19th-century classics: a…
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News Nobody’s Perfect
When it comes to our health, we can all be careless. Why do some of us keep smoking when we have relatives who died young from lung cancer and heart disease? Why do we eat like it’s going out of style when New York is chock-full of obese diabetics? Why are so many Sabbath tables…
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News Medicine mensch Nau vere bona tratoj So…? How Are Things?
Do you like to talk to other people? Sometimes I do; it depends how many there are. If I’m at a party, I slink toward the chips and-salsa or talk only to my wife. (Wallflowers don’t blossom; they just climb farther up the wall.) If I’m talking to a friend of mine, it can take…
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