Haim Watzman We were just getting on the New Jersey Turnpike when Danny Engel bent over his guitar and placed his lips on those of Debbie Lieberman. Both of them were sitting on the floor in the aisle of the crowded bus that was taking our Washington Metro Area Midrasha’s students back from a Chabad [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My new column is up at the Daily Beast: I bought a pair of tickets to Dudu Tassa and the Andalusia Orchestra performing the works of Tassa’s grandfather and great-uncle, the Al-Kuwaiti Brothers, the forgotten Jewish maestros of Baghdad. The tickets set me back two Yitzhak Ben-Tzvis, the equivalent of one Zalman Shazar, [...]

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Haim Watzman I’m pleased to announce that Company C and A Crack in the Earth are now available as e-books in all major formats as well as new print-on-demand paperback editions, all with new covers designed by my talented daughter, the animator Mizmor Watzman. Here are all the links: Company C, Kindle edition Company C, [...]

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Haim Watzman My Dear Herr Kapellmeister, It’s spring here in Jerusalem. Fields, yards, and the few vacant lots that remain in this increasingly overbuilt city are burgeoning with blood-red anemones. Two weeks ago, Ilana and I visited a hill not too far away that is carpeted with purple lupines, growing over the ruins of an [...]

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Haim Watzman God knows how Eliezer’s mind works. It goes off into other dimensions every time I try to have a serious conversation with him. That’s what happened on Purim this year. I waited through the entire reading of the megillah, the Book of Esther, to point out to him Chapter 4, verse 14, which [...]

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Haim Watzman “Have a biscuit,” I offered, pushing a plate of petit beurres toward him. “Sorry I don’t have anything better.” He giggled. I took a sip of syrupy Turkish coffee and a bite out of one of the flat and fluted cookies, cardboard with a whiff of artificial vanilla. I picked up my pen, [...]

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Haim Watzman “I think you should wear white this winter,” Amir says to Tziporah. He rummages through the box of dress-up clothes and dons a homburg and a brown clip-on tie that matches his hair. Tziporah is decked out in an orange paisley number with spaghetti straps, over which she’s draped a long, trailing, and [...]

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Haim Watzman Is there a dictionary of smiles? I need one. I know what my own smiles mean. I think of my face as a simple platform. It exhibits a range of smiles that clearly convey a certain range of messages, from “that’s nice” to “go away.” The male face has evolved so many layers [...]

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Haim Watzman The third and final of my guest posts on the Jewish Book Council’s Prosenpeople blog. Are Israeli guys real men? Yes, I mean the tank commanders and pilots and infantry sergeants. The ones who are viewed in so many places as the type specimens of the tough macho Jew. That was the subject [...]

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Haim Watzman The second of this week’s guest posts on the Jewish Book Council’s ProsenPeople blog. “Are you a professor?” asked the woman sitting next to me on the plane from Israel to New York. She’d been eyeing my laptop screen on and off for most of the flight, as I did a final polish [...]

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Haim Watzman I’m guest blogging this week on the Jewish Book Council’s “The Prosenpeople” and My Jewish Learning’s “Members of the Scribe” blogs. My Dad and I never watched the Superbowl together. Nor the NBA championships, the World Cup, or the World Series. In my family, the only person who watched sports on television was [...]

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Haim Watzman Written while reading Jane Austen at election time Mr. Gary Melman, of Lowry, in Denver, was a man, who for his own amusement, never took up anything but the Wall Street Journal, there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there is faculties were roused into admiration [...]

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