Chatting with Dara Horn, Prize-Winning Israeli Fiction by Ariel Horowitz

Come talk with us at the Lehrhaus about an afikoman lost in the mists of space-time. Plus an excerpt from new Israeli comic fiction; and Franz Rosenzweig, foodie and theorist of minhag.

A couple of years ago, one of my first and favorite students, Rabbi Charlie Schwartz got in touch to tell me that he and Joshua Foer (the memory champ and serial social entrepreneur) were founding a Tavern and House of Learning called the Lehrhaus. A few months later, Esquire called it one of the best new restaurants in America. Of course, it’s named after Franz Rosenzweig’s famous adult ed beis medrash. I don’t think they served food in the Frankfurt one but the spirit of serious undogmatic Jewish learning is the same—and I think Franz would’ve loved a good Mac & Cheese Kugel with an IPA. It’s a great, truly unique place, and I make sure to go whenever I’m in Boston.

In fact, this coming Sunday I’ll be there to chat with novelist, essayist, and all-around JRB favorite Dara Horn about her astonishing new graphic novel, One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe, a collaboration with the artist Theo Ellsworth. Dara and I would love to have you come join us at the Lehrhaus and the ticket includes a copy of the book.—I bet Dara will sign it for you (or your favorite brilliant Jewish young adult).

Jeremy Dauber invokes Yosef Yerushalmi, the Birds’ Head Haggadah, and underground comix, among other things, in his rave for One Little Goat in our forthcoming spring issue. For those of you who are—unconscionably!—not subscribers of the magazine, or as Rosenzweig would say, not yet subscribers, we’ll also have free issues at the event. And if you can’t make it to Somerville there is an easier way to get a copy. I guarantee that you’ll enjoy it—this is an especially gorgeous and scintillating issue—and you’ll also support the work of the best contemporary Jewish writers, scholars, and thinkers.

Meanwhile, here’s a panel from Horn’s book to whet your appetite for the book and our conversation:

Last fall, my colleagues Shai Secunda, Allan Arkush, and Joshua Barton were all reading Ariel Horowitz’s hilarious new Hebrew novel The Ghost Editor, about the shenanigans of Jerusalem intellectuals. So we called up Ariel (who is finishing a PhD in Comp Lit at Stanford) and asked him if we could commission Yardenne Greenspan to translate a chapter, which begins with this vigorous monologue by an aging Rabbi Dr. type:

“No-no-no-no-no-no! Not there. Lower . . . lower. There! Lower. No, boys! It’s hiding the thingy. Yes. Oh, yes. Like that. Yes. Yes. A little to the right. More to the right. To the right! To the right. Not your right, my right. That’s better, eh?”

While we were working through Yardenne’s translation with Ariel, he won Israel’s Levi Eshkol Literary prize! Read the excerpt here.

By the way, I wasn’t entirely joking about Rosenzweig. Here’s a deep piece (from our deep archive) by Larry Kaplan: Kashrut and Kugel: Franz Rosenzweig’s “The Builders” and here’s Mark Anderson’s witty illustration:

The original now hangs on the Lehrhaus walls (I gave it to Charlie as a hauswarming gift), but to get or give thought and art and wit (and kugel) like this, please subscribe, and if you can make it, please come chat with me and Dara Horn this Sunday at the Lehrhaus.