Out and About: Too Much of Alfred Kazin; Eli Valley Draws His Mom

Oy! Chicago gets fed up with the Millionaire Matchmaker.
Mel Brooks talks to Newsweek/The Daily Beast about Jewish humour and the “cloak of gentile correctness.”

Eli Valley

Jeffrey Shandler writes for Zeek about utopia, nostalgia, and photographer Albert J. Winn’s pictures of abandoned summer camps.
In Commentary, Joseph Epstein argues that the publication of Alfred Kazin’s journals tells us more than we needed to know.
Forward artist-in-residence Eli Valley draws a comic for Saveur about his mother’s cooking.

Eddy Portnoy appreciates rabbi, wrestler and business magnate Rafael Halperin.
D.G. Myers has a list of American Jewish fiction that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Did Michael Jackson learn the moonwalk from a French Jewish mime?
Forward contributor Joshua Furst imagines the final days of Muammar Gadhafi for salon.
The Arty Semite contributor Margaret Eby appreciates the life and work of Alabama folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham in the Paris Review.
In the Jewish Press, Richard McBee reviews two new political art shows about Israel and terrorism.
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Itzik Gottesman introduces the ballad “Vus tisti du sheyn meydele?” (What Are You Doing Here Pretty Girl?”), sung by his mother, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman.
Aviva Kempner, director of “Yoo Hoo Mrs Goldberg,” is working on a new documentary about Chicago business magnate Julius Rosenwald and his collaboration with Booker T. Washington to build schools in the South.
Serge Benattar, founder of France’s premiere Jewish newspaper, has died at age 63.

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