kaddish in two-part harmony
A conversation between an anthropologist and a musician along with a growing virtual minyan, on themes of death and dying, grief, ritual, and the interplay between music and words.about
Tag Archives: Middle East
a kaddish for qaddafi. of sorts.
I feel like I’m supposed to write a kaddish for Qaddafi. And I’m having a lot of trouble doing so. What I want to do is defend him somehow. Say that he’s been maligned for decades. Tell you about the … Continue reading
Posted in essays, kaddish in two-part harmony
Tagged Bourguiba, Ibn Khaldun, Libya, Middle East, North Africa, qaddafi, Tebourba, Tunisia, unemployment
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a kaddish for farzad bazoft, and also saddam hussein
I never met Saddam Hussein. But I wanted to. We were guests, actually, of Tariq Aziz — who was Foreign Minister at the time. Little known fact: they both share a birthday (one year apart): April 28th. It was my … Continue reading
Posted in essays, kaddish in two-part harmony
Tagged Farzad Bazoft, Gulf War, Iraq, Middle East, Saddam Huseein, Tariq Aziz
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abraham, sarah, and hagar, a kaddish for patterns worth shattering
The question is do we feel sorry for Abraham, or do we say goddamn it, you knew what you were getting us into? Or is there some other way to resolve the whole bit? I’ve been thinking about this for … Continue reading
Posted in essays, kaddish in two-part harmony
Tagged Abraham, Chango, Hagar, Ishmael, Jewish identity, Middle East, parenting, Sarah, women, Yitzhak
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daily kaddish: all that unrest in the Middle East
When even a Middle East expert chains them all together like that, it’s no wonder I feel overwhelmed, and my problem is embarrassingly trivial next to the problems of all those people who are trying to live through all this. And then there are all those people who are not living through all this—who are dying in all this.
A Kaddish for all of them. Continue reading
Posted in kaddish in two-part harmony, podcasts
Tagged Bahrain, death and dying, Egypt, Libya, Middle East, Tunisia, unrest, Yemen
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the little country that could — a kaddish for mohamed bouazizi and ibn khaldun’s oscillation of elites
Once upon a time there was a little country. It hadn’t always been a little country, but it had for the most part been an outlier in the larger scheme of things. It prided itself on being the ‘breadbasket of … Continue reading
Posted in essays, kaddish in two-part harmony
Tagged Bourguiba, death and dying, Egypt, Middle East, Mohamed Bouazizi, North Africa, Tunisia
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a kaddish for the israeli flag, may it rest in peace
People say that there are a lot of reasons to open up a bible. Here’s one of them you might not have ever been asked to think about. And a reason why using the bible — especially לך לך — … Continue reading
Posted in essays, kaddish in two-part harmony
Tagged Abraham, Israel, Israeli flag, Jewish identity, Middle East, Tetragrammaton, YHVH
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the tzaddik sells his daughter
Jerusalem, 1961 The tzaddik, as we know, was a great collector of Judaica: manuscripts, ceremonial artifacts, and ancient pieces of junk. For him, every single fragment was precious and worthy of preserving. Each broken piece of something had matching pieces … Continue reading
Posted in essays, tzaddik stories
Tagged collector, Judaica, Middle East, tzaddik stories
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