Ruth Wisse on Five Books Every Jew Should Read
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.6 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During this year of lockdowns, shuttered businesses, and working from home, people have made time for many new habits and hobbies, from baking bread to reorganizing closets. In this podcast, Jewish literary and political scholar Ruth Wisse, one of our era’s great masters of Jewish letters, offers her own suggestion for how to spend at least some of that time: reading the greatest works of modern Jewish literature.
Those works to her are:
- Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (Sign up for Professor Wisse's free online course on the novel here.)
- Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem (Sign up for Professor Wisse's free online course on the stories here.)
- In the Heart of the Seas by S.Y. Agnon
- The Wall by John Hersey
- My War with Hersh Rasseyner by Chaim Grade
In this episode, Wisse explains what drew her to her choices and why, even with just a few months left in the year, we all ought to pick up one of these books and start reading.
Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.
This podcast was recorded over Zoom as part of a virtual seminar series for Israel gap-year students on “The Jewish Political Condition.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ruth Wise is one of the founders of Jewish studies in the modern academy, and she's one of the titans of the field of Jewish literature. |
| 0:14.4 | She has translated from the Yiddish, Ghraada, and Peretz, edited volumes of Sholomelechchem, and collections of Yiddish verse. She's written |
| 0:22.1 | penetrating analyses of a great many modern literary figures, and over the course of her |
| 0:26.9 | career, as a beloved teacher at McGill and then at Harvard, she taught generations of students |
| 0:32.9 | to see big ideas in modern Jewish fiction. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, |
| 0:38.0 | Jonathan Silver. This week, I asked Ruth Weiss to recommend five books, five novels that can |
| 0:43.9 | be read in these pandemic times when so many of our listeners are locked down in their homes, |
| 0:48.9 | or their travel and external activities are so limited. She recommends George Eliot's Daniel Duranda, Sholem Alechem's |
| 0:55.8 | Tevia stories, Shai Agnone's in the Heart of the Seas, John Hersey's The Wall, and Chaim |
| 1:01.0 | Grades' My Quarrel with Hirsch Ressainer. Each and every one of these deserves its own |
| 1:05.6 | discussion, or series of discussions. But this week, we find out what attracted Ruth to each of these |
| 1:10.6 | works, and how, |
| 1:12.1 | each in their own way, they speak to the modern Jewish condition. If you enjoy this conversation, |
| 1:16.6 | you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you'll |
| 1:21.9 | leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this |
| 1:27.2 | or any of our other |
| 1:28.0 | podcast episodes at podcast at ticfafunds.org. And of course, if you want to learn more about our |
| 1:33.4 | work at Tickfah, you can visit our website, ticfunds.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now |
| 1:39.0 | is my conversation with the great Ruth Weiss. Ruth Weiss, welcome back to the Tikva podcast. |
| 1:45.3 | Thanks very much, Joan. |
| 1:46.7 | Very glad to be here. |
| 1:48.1 | Our task in this conversation is to take a tour of some of your favorite texts of |
... |
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