Ruby Namdar

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Articles

Emunah & the Artist | SAPIR Journal

Aug 12, 2024 | sapirjournal.org | Ruby Namdar

The word faith often makes me cringe, especially when it is uttered or written in English. It feels too concrete, too categoric, to describe the subtle, ethereal relationship between the individual (and especially the artistic) mind and the sublime, or the Divine. The Hebrew emunah, with its lexical flutter toward the word aman (artist), finds itself more palatable on my tongue.
The Empty Apartment

May 29, 2024 | tabletmag.com | Ruby Namdar

The apartment stood empty for some six months, maybe more. Who can remember? In the weeks following the passing of its tenant, a lonely and reclusive man none of the neighbors really knew all that well, a certain commotion was recorded: relatives coming and going, carrying with them pieces of furniture and all sorts of bric-a-brac. From time to time you could hear the thuds of hammers and other tools banging against the walls and the tiles, which made the neighbors in adjacent apartments wonder.
“The Secret of Our Army’s Endurance”

Jan 22, 2024 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | S.Y. Agnon |Jeffrey Saks |Ruby Namdar |Amos Yadlin

This war just goes on and on. If it doesn’tstop soon, the world will be nothing but ashes, God forbid. It’s like a wild beast, this war—it’s devoured the best of our young men. I tell you, it’s the end of the world!—S.Y. Agnon, To This DayHaving spent the years of the Great War in Berlin, Leipzig, and elsewhere in the Second Reich, Agnon came to his aversion to war and militarism honestly.
Reprise of the Repressed

Jan 22, 2024 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Adam Kirsch |Shai Secunda |Ruby Namdar

Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York through September 1, 2024 Classic Stage Company, New York I was at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre one evening in November when a Nazi walked down the aisle and took a seat a few rows in front of me.
Jewish Review of Books

Dec 28, 2023 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Shai Secunda |Ruby Namdar |Akiva Schick |Ilan Stavans

A conversation with the Israeli American novelist Ruby Namdar about the novelistic plight of American Jewry in the aftermath of October 7. SHAI SECUNDA: How have you been coping since October 7? RUBY NAMDAR: I’m still trying to wake up from this nightmare. I walk in the streets. I see parents with babies. I can’t look. I walk in Riverside Park, I see an older man hugging his granddaughter, and I almost start crying.
For Israel, Another New Layer of Trauma

Oct 8, 2023 | theatlantic.com | Ruby Namdar

I will never forget that mild, golden early-October day almost exactly 50 years ago: the jarring sound of the sirens that tore into the otherworldly silence of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement; the ultra-Orthodox men, still wrapped in their snow-white High Holiday robes and fringed prayer shawls, riding on army jeeps that drove them to their volunteer positions in hospitals and military morgues—an inconceivable sight.
JBC Discussion Guides

Sep 12, 2023 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Ruby Namdar |Hillel Halkin |Kristin Hannah

JBC Discussion Guides take some of the work out of your book club, whether you’re looking for help selecting books, or need some conversation starters. Check out the annual selection guides for a curated list of books to read for the year, and the individual guides to add depth (and some fun) to your book club meeting.
From Place to Place in Search of a Place: Reading Agnon in Berlin

Jul 9, 2023 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Shai Secunda |S.Y. Agnon |Ruby Namdar |Shari Saiman

Last spring, I became inexplicably fixated on a distant, autumnal detail: whether I would be able to build a sukkah in Berlin. An unexpected invitation to spend a fellowship year working on my next book at a distinguished institute near the wooded edges of the city was almost too good to be true. Yes, it was far from my family in Israel, but it was closer than the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where I normally teach.
As American as Augie March

Jul 9, 2023 | jewishreviewofbooks.com | Michael Weingrad |Ruby Namdar

Xargol Books 356 pp., 98 NIS In the preface to Shanim tovot (Happy New Years), published earlier this year, the editor, Dr. Gabriela Sadan (Sadovnik), informs us that the main text has “no literary value whatsoever.” But then Sadan, a prominent academic who researches contemporary American feminist thought and women’s migration history, observes that in our capitalist and patriarchal society, literary value itself is an illusion, merely a register of oppressive power relations.