Search results for ""Author Devorah Baum""

'This book is funny, clever and, at times, heartbreaking. In other words, Jewish' David Baddiel '[Baum is] intellectually luminous, psychologically penetrating, existentially anxious, and wonderfully funny' Zadie Smith 'Hilarious and thought-provoking' David Schneider The Jewish joke is as old as Abraham, and like the Jews themselves it has wandered over the world, learned countless new languages, worked with a range of different materials, been performed in front of some pretty hostile crowds, but still retained its own distinctive identity. So what is it that animates the Jewish joke? Why are Jews so often thought of as 'funny'? And how old can a joke get? The Jewish Joke is a brilliant - and very funny - riff on Jewish jokes, about what marks them apart from other jokes, why they are important to Jewish identity and how they work. Ranging from self-deprecation to anti-Semitism, politics to sex, it looks at the past of Jewish joking and asks whether the Jewish joke has a future. With jokes from Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as Freud and Marx (Groucho mostly), this is both a compendium and a commentary, light-hearted and deeply insightful.

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BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORKER AND KIRKUS ''Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom'' Zadie SmithA shining exploration of why we marry from writer and academic Devorah BaumFor better or worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do part we've always done it and we're still doing it. Of all our cultural institutions, marriage is the most ancient, but also the most puzzling.In this compelling and delightful book, Devorah Baum examines the many meanings we have given to marriage, interweaving the personal with insights from a host of writers, artists and thinkers.From Freud to Ferrante, and One Thousand and One Nights to Fleabag, she looks at marriage in all of its forms from act of love to leap of faith, and asks: what are we really doing when we say I do'?Bo

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In this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish—even when you’re not. Self-hatred. Guilt. Resentment. Paranoia. Hysteria. Overbearing Mother-Love. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews. Reflecting on why Jews have so often been depicted, both by others and by themselves, as prone to “negative” feelings, she queries how negative these feelings really are. And as the pace of globalization leaves countless people feeling more marginalized, uprooted, and existentially threatened, she argues that such “Jewish” feelings are becoming increasingly common to us all. Ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Sarah Bernhardt to Woody Allen, Anne Frank to Nathan Englander, Feeling Jewish bridges the usual fault lines between left and right, insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, and even Semite and anti-Semite, to offer an indispensable guide for our divisive times.

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BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORKER AND KIRKUS 'Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom' Zadie SmithA shining exploration of why we marry from writer and academic Devorah BaumFor better or worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do part – we’ve always done it and we’re still doing it. Of all our cultural institutions, marriage is the most ancient, but also the most puzzling.In this compelling and delightful book, Devorah Baum examines the many meanings we have given to marriage, interweaving the personal with insights from a host of writers, artists and thinkers.From Freud to Ferrante, and One Thousand and One Nights to Fleabag, she looks at marriage in all of its forms – from act of love to leap of faith, and asks: what are we really doing when we say ‘I do’?Both celebration and critique, On Marriage is a guide like no other to the landscape of marriage.'A hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve' Alain de Botton

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