publications january to june 2020

1.      Review of Martin Jacobs, Reorientating the East: Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World in Journal of Religious History 20 (2020)

2.      Review of D.I. Shayovitz. A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural ibn Medieval Ashkenaz in Journal of Religious History 20 (2020).

3.      Review of Bruce Henderson, The Ritchie Boys: The Jews who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler in Shadow of the Shoah (6 February 2020) online at https//www. shadowofshoah.com/blog/2020/2/1/the-ritchie-boys-the-jews-who-escaped-the-nazis-and-returned-to-fight-hitler

4.      with Thomas Klikauer, review of Paul S. Adler, The 99% Economy: How Democratic Socialism Can Overcome the Crises of Capitalism in Marx and Philosophy online at https:/marxandphilosophy.org.uk/book/17776_the_99_percent_economy_how_democratic_    socialism_can_overcome_the_crises_of_capitalism

5.      with Thomas Klikauer, “The Economics of Democratic Socialism” Counterpunch (3 March 2020) online  at https://www/counterpunch/org/2020/03/03/the-economics-of-democratic-socialism

6.       “The Dancing Goblin” review of  Helga Schneider, The Bonfire of Berlin: A Lost Childhood in Wartime Germany on  Retrievals, Preservations and Speculations (20/03/2020) and East European Jewish History  (11 March 2020) eejh@yahoogroups.com

7.      with Thomas Klikauer, review essay, Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays To Be Privileged in Marx & Philosophy Review of Books (11 March 2020).

8.      with Thomas Klikauer: “Austria’s Cover-Up of Former Nazis: Review of the Film Murer—Anatomie eines Prozesses” in Tikkun (13 March 2020)

9.      with Thomas Klikauer, review of Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play itself Out in Marx & Philosophy: Review of Books (20 March 2020

10.   with Thomas Klikauer, “Corona in Germany: Hording and Authoritarianism” Counter Punch  (26 March 2020).

11.   with Thomas Klikauer, “There’s Class Warfare and the Rich are Winning” Countercurrents (4 April 2020) online ay https://counjtercurrentsd/2020/04/04/theres-class-warfare-and-the-rich-are winning

12.    with Thomas Klikauer, “Neo-Nazis and Ant-Semitism in Germany” CounterPunch (25  June 2020) online at https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/25/neo-nazis-and-antisemitism-in-germany

3 poems of mutability

On the recent passing of my friend and mentor

José Faur

Most great men I have known I never met,

a few encountered through the profane word,

and some in passing visits, like a thousand bats

emerging from a cavern in darkness, heard

in screeching stampedes, not as coherent thoughts,

the distance of the inscribed voice, but he

was different; for we sat and  chatted through

many an afternoon in Jerusalem; when we

parted and returned to quiet unspoken words,

the sentences gained a resonance to call

from the depths of prophecy, like lonely birds

who sing to each other inside their hidden worlds,

no longer chattering; we spoke as angels

do in the heavenly void, creating spells

in a superabundance of secret words

as yet beyond all natural languages,

emerging from the dark sub-lunar otherness, and all

the liquid consciousness of unformed  dreams,

before there were baskets floating on the streams

of Eretz Mitzraim, a river of sacred monsters,

with lisping infants and plagues unimagined

and still unnumbered in unwritten scrolls.

In memory of Lloyd Demause, Friend and Mentor

You liked to tease and yet were patient, came

When bullies rose up out of the audience.

We met rarely but wrote often, argued

And challenged, as a mentor ought, without blame.

At times, in a darkened restaurant, the sense

Of what you meant cut quick into my soul.

And I would ponder over the years; or, glued

Your ideas on to my own until they merged;

And even oceans and continents apart,

Before I framed a sentence and honed a proof,

Your critical voice, out of my pen, emerged

To make me think again. We were never heart

To heart, but you were always in my words, aloof

When necessary to chastise me, or deep enough

To comfort me in silence, confusion and doubt.

Fire and Flood

While others have fought forest fires, shovel

In hand, as flames tunnelled underground,

Burning through twisted roots, it is a marvel

When something burns unseen for months, no sound

Of crackling or the hiss of gasses comes unbound

And slices through soil and bracken, a devil

In the sparks that suddenly erupt. And some

Dig deeply into swollen river banks

To make a breach and open a sluice, or plumb

Into a hidden current, anything that ranks

As flood control, some powerful pressures come

Out of the secret channels of the earth, like tanks

Across a field of trenches unseen over the Somme

Bloated with a million muddied corpses, dumb

And dreamless, thus their nations’ forgotten thanks,

To build a bridge or raft with coffin planks.

Allegorical Mysteries

Open the door and two things happen;

On a sunny day, the clouds darken and the rain falls;

When it is wet and wild, the leaves dry out and blow into the house,

And scatter into every room, with clanging and banging.

Pick up a glass or a dish,

No matter how large,

Its sides become unctuous

And crash to the floor,

Tiny splinters disappear into unknown crannies.

Pills bounce completely out of sight,

The more rare and expensive

The less likely ever to be found.

Newspaper pages refuse to be unfolded

Without first plunging deep into a bowl of soup

Then coating all garments with pea-green sludge.

There are never pencils to be found

For crossword  puzzles

Or to take important messages from the phone,

Except those lacking points or erasers.

These are the implicit principles of modernity,

The fixed laws of domestic economy

And cosmic harmonies long silenced;

The reason why the dinosaurs became extinct

And the only explanation for the massive

Proportion of DNA code unreadable in the brain.

******

What the Bees and the Bats Allow

Bees of all species, murderous and needful, soon

Will be missing from the world of pollen, low petal-stools

Where faerie maidens danced beneath the moon,

No longer filling honey through the tools

Of their proboscis; so that colours too will fade,

Like scents, from our gardens. The bat allows

The darkness once more to reign, and all things made

in caves by unseeing creatures; only swallows

chasing insects as the dawn appears, like arias

by divas rapidly declining, weighted and unsighted

by unshaped melodies they screech, the carriers

of memory no longer recognized, blighted

mysteries of nature and her seasons’ stench,

Parasites laid out where human corpses fill the bench.