Colloquies

My American Father

My American Father

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Ned Gray) Just a couple of days after I arrived to Amherst, Jules Chametzky called to invite me for lunch. My wife and oldest son (the youngest was born three years later) were still in New York. The following day, we met at a local restaurant. Right away, . . .

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in honor of garlic cloves. . .

in honor of garlic cloves. . .

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling)  in honor of garlic clovesbaked wholein rosemary olive oil  that eating together could bean artwhich Americans have perfected that auld lang syne could come in versions unexpected that canons are what you make of them that living in generations brings gracefulness to . . .

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For Jules, in Appreciation

For Jules, in Appreciation

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling) By the second half of the twentieth century, apartheid was so deeply embedded in the national culture that the divide between black and white, codified in law, was fully embraced by institutions from pulpit to prison—and nowhere more so than in colleges . . .

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Broadening the Canon

Broadening the Canon

(A Chametzky family photograph, Brooklyn, NY, 1942. Jules Chametzky, fourteen years old, is standing in the back row, second from the right, next to his father and behind his mother.) From “Broadening the Canon, or Talmudic Faulknerism: Reading Chametzky, Knowing Jules” (MR 44 1/2, 2003). When we met in Berlin he adopted . . .

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Remembering Jules

Remembering Jules

(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling) Jules and I were colleagues before we were friends. We met in 1973 when we joined about a dozen faculty, aggrieved by budget cuts and administrative incompetence more broadly, on an organizing committee aiming to unionize faculty and librarians on the UMass . . .

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Our Rabbi

Our Rabbi

Jules was my rabbi, and I think he was the rabbi for many of those who came to his service at Wildwood Cemetery on September 27. He was our rabbi in the spiritual sense, in the police procedural, and in the parental sense. He looked after us. He counseled us. He shared . . .

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for Jules

for Jules

On Thursday, September 23, the founding editor of the Massachusetts Review, Jules Chametzky, died in Amherst, at the age of ninety-three. To commemorate his passing, and to offer his friends an opportunity for reflection and remembrance, we offer here a small gathering of memories, collected from a few of his friends. I . . .

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Perspectives on COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Bias and Xenophobia

Perspectives on COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Bias and Xenophobia

(Photo: Jessica Wong, Jenny Chiang, and Sheila Vo from the Massachusetts Asian American Commission outside the Massachusetts State House in March.Steven Senne / Associated Press) Introduction: Perspectives on COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Bias and Xenophobia Wednesday, September 23rd, 12:00-2:00pm Panel 1 Description: Since the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19, thousands of acts of anti-Asian . . .

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Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 23-24

Read Parts 20-22 here “Now I must make amends.” It is often said (when people are talking of the “Auden group,” those poets who came to prominence with Auden in the Thirties) that MacNeice was the collective’s resident skeptic. Others, you will hear—from Samuel Hynes in his book, The Auden Generation, from Edna . . .

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Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 20-22

Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 20-22

(Photo: Christmas Rose, Helleborus x hybridus, Winter Jewels “Jade Tiger,” White Flower Farm) Read Part 19 here “So much for Christmas” Vita brevis, ars longa. The week before Christmas finds MacNeice in London’s National Gallery. Outside, movement continues and suggests ephemerality. Inside, “Other worlds persist,” caught and elevated to significance by the artists’ attention, . . .

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