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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Culture The Leftmost Poets Sing Songs of Love
Proletpen: America’s Rebel Yiddish Poets Edited by Amelia Glaser and David Weintraub. Translated by Amelia Glaser. Illustrations by Dana Craft. University of Wisconsin Press, 192 pages, $45. * * *| Proletpen, a new anthology of American Communist Yiddish poets, is a book divided against itself. Dovid Katz’s introduction, by turns eloquent, tongue-tied, hortatory and disingenuous,…
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News Taking Stock
There’s a joke about travel writers turning experiences abroad into publishable material. Spend two months in China, say, and you can write a book; spend two years, and you can write an article. But spend 20 years, and you find you can’t write anything at all. I feel the same way about the past year…
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News What Little I Know About Medicine
I thought I would title this month’s column “What I Don’t Know About Medicine,” but my editors want 800 words, not an encyclopedia. What I do know about medicine should fit nicely into the space allotted. The rotation I’m starting this week is known in hospital jargon as the sub-internship; the registrar’s office calls it…
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News Resetting the Spiritual Clock
I’ve been getting up at five in the morning for the past two months. It would be nice if this new schedule granted me some insight into the human condition or the plight of the sick, but my observations are on a smaller scale. A lot more people than you might think are up that…
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News Job Hunt: Choosing the Right White Coat
I am 32 years old, and it’s time to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I do have things narrowed down somewhat: I want to be a doctor. But what kind? I don’t have the luxury of thinking it over much longer. The time has come to apply to residency programs…
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News Doctor’s Orders: Fruit Salad and a Cheese Sandwich
Despite the superpowers previously described in this space, medical students are normal people. They need places to lay their heads, white medical coats to keep out the rain, and three meals a day. Since their time for breakfast and dinner is sacrificed to sleep, three meals often means only one: lunch. What’s for lunch, and…
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News Visiting Patients, With Dictionary In Hand
Before I became a medical student, I thought I spoke Spanish pretty well. I spent six months after college researching minority languages in Spain and, after moving to New York, I’ve had many a friendly conversation with miscellaneous Spanish speakers I’ve accosted: random passersby from Puerto Rico, law students from Colombia, grocery packers from the…
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News Making Rounds: A Hospital Drama
There is a drama performed in hospitals that is as essential and unchanging as davening, or eating breakfast. It’s the doctors’ twice-daily bedside perambulation, known to everyone as “rounds.” Whenever a medical student walks into a patient’s room, it’s an act for both concerned. Perhaps the metaphor is inexact. Each actually wants to tell the…
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