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‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ hits FX Thursday. Just don’t call it a Jewish series, says its creator.
(JTA) — From Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s point of view, her best-selling 2019 novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble” wasn’t all that Jewish. She’s a little perplexed by the deluge of press junket questions about its Jewish essence.
“It’s funny: I don’t think of it as a Jewish book. I know people do,” she said.
Brodesser-Akner, a journalist famous for her sharp celebrity profiles, is now the showrunner of the book’s star-studded TV adaptation, an 8-episode FX series that debuts on Hulu on Thursday. In the story, Toby Fleishman (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is a 41-year-old Jewish hepatologist who has recently divorced Rachel (Claire Danes), his ambitious, icy, blonde theater agent wife. Early on in the story, Rachel disappears in the middle of the night, leaving Toby with their two children and a truckload of resentment. Toby, who had a nebbishy and romantically insecure youth before marrying Rachel, is now drowning in the sexual bounty of dating apps.
On Zoom, Brodesser-Akner was speaking a few days after the show’s blowout bash at Carnegie Hall and Tavern on the Green, an iconic Central Park restaurant. “I’ve never been to an event like that. It was 600 people,” she said. It sounded like a scene that could have been plucked right from “Fleishman,” which is set on the extremely wealthy Upper East Side, and in which the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood are at odds with the ambitions and personal longings of its middle-aged characters.
Brodesser-Akner, 47, who was both adrenalized and a little frazzled, had to balance the premiere with parenting duties — she’s a mother of two boys, ages 15 and 12. “I’m still picking sequins from my teeth.”
As a writer, Brodesser-Akner likes to play with the power of subjectivity, and she built “Fleishman” on it. Though the story begins as Toby’s, it eventually morphs into a “Rashomon”-esque take on the divorce and what really went wrong in the Fleishmans’ marriage. The story is narrated by Libby (Lizzy Caplan), Toby’s friend from their year abroad in Israel. A former men’s magazine writer, Libby is now a lost and frustrated stay-at-home mom in suburban New Jersey (and a stand-in for Brodesser-Akner). Adam Brody steals scenes as Seth, an immature finance bro and another year-in-Israel friend with whom Toby reconnects after the divorce. (His presence is a homecoming of sorts for those of us who spent our tween years watching him play a different Seth in “The O.C.”)
“I don’t think of it as a Jewish book,” says Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Brodesser-Akner pieced together the story’s Jewish elements: a doctor named Fleishman, a bat mitzvah, Friday night dinners, a year abroad in Israel, a few jokes about Jews being bad at home repairs (which is the subject of a very funny scene in episode six between Toby and Seth). There are a few insidery details that she fails to mention, like a fake Jewish sleepaway camp called Camp Marah, which sounds like the real Camp Ramah but roughly translates to “Camp Bitter” in Hebrew. Does all this add up to a “Jewish” story?
“I read ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen, and it mentions Christmas I think 47 times. I read ‘Crossroads’ and it’s about the family of a youth minister. But neither of those is ever called a Christian book. This is called a Jewish book. I don’t object to it being called a Jewish book. But to me it’s mostly an American story. As a writer and as an observer of the culture, I think that calling this a Jewish book is proof of the answer to an old question: are Jews considered Americans? And the answer is no.” She threw in her characteristic meta analysis: “So now you have a very Jewish profile. How Jewish is that, Sarah?”
The self-aware comment is a good reminder that although her responses may be unguarded, she has not forgotten that she’s on the record. A name in New York media, Brodesser-Akner wrote for GQ and is now a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, having profiled Gwyneth Paltrow, Ethan Hawke and Tom Hanks and written about the Joshua Cohen novel “The Netanyahus,” the television show “Thirtysomething” and much more. She inserts herself often into her writing, not to make it about herself, but to remind the reader that every profile is by nature filtered through the lens of the writer crafting it. Her writing is searing, self-deprecating — so raw it’s still bleeding and often quite funny.
“I wrote the book the way I would write a profile, just like I always do. But this man doesn’t exist,” she said.
RELATED: 5 Jewish places that inspired Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’
We had tried to meet in person near her home on the Upper West Side, but by the time she was available, I was in Tel Aviv, placing us along the Israel-New York axis on which “Fleishman” is set. When Toby suddenly calls Libby to tell her he’s getting divorced, he catapults her into memories of their early twenties in Jerusalem. Those thoughts make Libby miss the possibilities of her youth, the ones time has ruthlessly and inevitably extinguished. Eventually her longing for her past becomes so overwhelming that it threatens her marriage to her menschy and patient husband, played by Josh Radnor. (For more longing-for-younger-days while in Israel content, Brodesser-Akner wrote a Saveur essay about vegetable soup in Jerusalem — her Proustian madeleine. Interviewing Brodesser-Akner from my friend’s apartment in Tel Aviv, a city where I lived in my twenties, I found the theme of longing for the past hit almost too close to home.)
Part of the reason Brodesser-Akner doesn’t think the “Fleishman” story is all that Jewish is that she doesn’t feel all that Jewish — at least not relative to her mother and sisters, who are aligned with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement and live within a few blocks of each other in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
“I don’t think any writer has ever gotten it right,” she says of her Jewish background. “They say I was raised Orthodox. It’s interesting because it always makes me look like the black sheep in my family, when really they are. I’m exactly how I was raised to be until I was 12.”
After her mother, a secular Israeli, and her father, a Conservative Long Islander, divorced, her mother put Brodesser-Akner and her sisters in Jewish school. Some Jewish observance trickled back to her mother, who ended up going the Chabad route.
“My mom had never been inside a synagogue until the day she married my father. Now that is what we call ironic,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Brodesser-Akner’s two sisters followed, and her mother eventually remarried and had another child, the only sibling born into a religious household.
“The thing that made me a journalist was being raised in a home where, at age 12, I was relegated to observer. I had to learn how to understand other people’s points of view. And now that’s what I do,” she said.
Despite their religious differences — Brodesser-Akner attends an Orthodox synagogue but sends her children to an unaffiliated Jewish school and says she wakes up “every morning with new ideas” — the author is very close with her family, and her sisters were at the “Fleishman” premiere.
“They were at the premiere of my perverted sex show,” she joked with a laugh referring to the Hulu series, which features some sexual content as Toby explores the post-divorce New York dating scene. “They show up for me and I show up for them. I have my challenges with it, but I think their challenges must be greater. They never say this to me, but they must think that my life is comparatively…” She looked away thoughtfully, trying to find the right words. “They must think my lifestyle is comparatively less worthwhile. But we really love each other.”
To Brodesser-Akner, the most Jewish show on television is “The Patient,” which she calls “the best show I have seen in 100 years.” And that’s not because it (like “Fleishman”) is on FX. “I’m not that kind of interview!” she said.
Lizzy Caplan plays Toby’s friend Libby. (FX Networks)
“It’s the most Jewish show in all of the Jewish ways. It grapples with a Jewish prisoner; with the difference between a Conservative Jewish female cantor whose son becomes ultra-Orthodox — I’d never seen that on screen. It was kind of the only relatable Jewish matter I’ve ever seen. People ask me if I’ve watched ‘Shtisel.’ And I always say, I’m in the 47th season of an ultra-Orthodox family drama myself and not really interested!” She laughed. “But also I think of the other Jewish matters on television, which are adapted memoirs of people who were ultra-Orthodox and now aren’t. It’s like no one can imagine religious people being happy in their lives. And that’s really shocking to me. My family is very happy.”
Brodesser-Akner wound up with her dream cast: she had a list of five actors — Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Josh Radnor and Adam Brody — and no backup plan. She noted the fact that viewers have seen them grow up on screen as one reason they were right for the roles. For many, watching Caplan, Eisenberg and Brody sit across from each other in a diner will feel like a camp reunion, the fulfillment of a Jewish television fantasy they never knew they had.
“One thing that we were trying to get across is ‘how could it be that I am this old when I was once this young?’ And the fact that you have a memory of Claire from ‘My So-Called Life,’ or Jesse from ‘The Squid and the Whale’ — that does so much of the work of the show without writing a word,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Besides Danes (who plays the only main character with a non-Jewish parent, whom the book makes clear she resembles) the lead actors are all Jewish — a notable fact in a time when Jewish representation on screen, and who should be allowed to play Jewish characters, is the subject of continued debate.
Last month, New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, who is Jewish, tweeted, “There is a simple solution to the question of whether various non-Jewish actors are allowed to play Jews & that is to ask me.” Brodesser-Akner responded to the tweet, writing “[Non-Jew] Oscar Isaac in Scenes from a Marriage is the best ex-ortho I ever saw on screen!”
About casting Jewish actors, Brodesser-Akner noted a legal issue rarely mentioned in the representation debate: one can cast based on looks, but it’s illegal in the United States to cast based on religion. She took this very seriously.
“I spoke to [‘The Plot Against America’ director] David Simon about it and he said, ‘They’re actors. You let them act.’ And I agree with that. The question that I asked myself was who was perfect for it?” she said.
Even if Brodesser-Akner rejects the claim that “Fleishman” is a definitively Jewish story, wasn’t she consciously playing with some Philip Roth-inspired Jewish archetypes? Toby the nice Jewish doctor, the devoted, idealistic dad who’s also self-righteous, horny and insecure.
No, she insists she wasn’t. But also Philip Roth is so ingrained in her that who’s to say? And isn’t the question flawed in the first place?
“All I can say is that I am made out of Philip Roth. I’m so formed by his books. I actually would say that you have a bias in the asking of your question, in that you’re Jewish too. And you also are made out of Philip Roth books since you’re a writer. Again, that goes back to the same question as ‘are we American?’ To me, Toby is not ‘a Jewish guy.’ He’s just a guy! He’s the kind of guy I know! I was just trying to be myself.”
“Fleishman is in Trouble” premieres its first two episodes on Hulu on Nov. 17. It will release each of its six remaining episodes weekly on Thursdays.
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The post ‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ hits FX Thursday. Just don’t call it a Jewish series, says its creator. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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NY woman charged with attempting to send over $30,000 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(JTA) — A New York woman was arrested and charged with attempting to provide financial support to “Palestine Islamic Jihad,” a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Catherine Beth Washburn, 37, of Irondequoit, New York, allegedly sent more than $30,000 in cryptocurrency across 80 transactions to an individual who identified as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighter in Gaza and claimed to have engaged in attacks against Israel, according to the Justice Department.
She was charged with attempting to provide material support and resources, namely currency, to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
“As alleged in the complaint, this defendant, fueled by her self-described hate of Israel and Jewish people, went to great lengths to attempt to provide financial support to terrorist organizations that use violence to further their agendas, including the Palestine Islamic Jihad,” Michael DiGiacomo, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, said in a statement.
Despite Washburn’s alleged attempts to “support violent extremism,” he added, she was “stopped.”
In February and March 2026, the FBI obtained alleged communications between Washburn and the Islamic Jihad fighter in which she told him that she wished “every day were October 7th.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is an Iran-backed Palestinian terror group that attacked Israel alongside Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, during which its fighters abducted and killed Israeli citizens, including Dror Or, who was killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, and Oded Lifshitz, who was killed in captivity, and Gadi Mozes and Arbel Yehud, who were abducted by the group and released in January 2025.
“[I]f I lived in Gaza, I would fight alongside the resistance,” Washburn allegedly wrote, adding that she hated Jews “very much,” and that she wished Israel “would disappear.”
In one message, Washburn allegedly stated, “I feel excited every time I see news of the killing of an occupation soldier.”
Attempts to reach Washburn for comment by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency were unsuccessful.
According to the criminal complaint, Washburn is a leader of the Direct Action Movement for Palestinian Liberation, an extremist anti-Zionist group. The group, which operates in the United States and abroad, was launched last spring and engages in “direct action” to “protest, attack, destory [sic], sabotage and shut down Zionist and U.S infrastructures & business and all its affiliates,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In August 2025, an affiliate of the group, Jermaiah Yusuf Sawaqed, 25, of Everett, Massachusetts, was charged with vandalizing the Massachusetts State House with paint.
Washburn made an initial appearance Tuesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark W. Pedersen and was detained.
The post NY woman charged with attempting to send over $30,000 to Palestinian Islamic Jihad appeared first on The Forward.
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Columbia University pledged to revamp Mideast offerings. Students of the subject say fragmented courses fall short.
New president Jennifer Mnookin took the helm of Columbia University July 1, vowing to chart a steady course following a tumultuous Gaza War protest movement and Trump administration threats to pull funding that led the Ivy to make a controversial pledge for reforms.
The government also threatened a takeover of the department called Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department (MESAAS), which has long been associated with the Palestinian cause and known as a hub for scholarship critical of Israel.
Columbia’s July 2025 agreement, issued in response to allegations that the protests amounted to discrimination against Jews on campus, pledged to “conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting with the Middle East” to ensure offerings are “comprehensive and balanced.”
Nearly a year later, the department has been left untouched, according to its chair, Gil Hochberg.
“No requests, suggestions, recommendations, changes were made or enforced by the university on MESAAS as a department. Our academic autonomy has been respectfully preserved,” she said in an interview with the Forward. “The department itself has not been directly or indirectly affected.”
Columbia has made other moves to offer more courses that cover Israel. But undergraduates who study the region say that fragmentation makes pursuing a major challenging.
Orpaz Zamir, a Middle East Studies major at Columbia who hopes to pursue a career in Mideast policy, said courses focused on the conflict are limited. “If you want to study about Israel and Palestine, there are only two classes you can take,” referring to a sociology course taught by Professor Yinon Cohen and the course taught by Massad. He took both.
Massad, the only professor currently teaching about the conflict in MESAAS, has been the department’s chief lightning rod. His article a day after the Oct. 7 attacks, describing the Israeli victims as “colonists” and videos of the attacks as “awesome,” sparked a petition with 70,000 signatures to remove him from Columbia. Massad, who is tenured, has been teaching the course Palestinian and Israeli Politics and Societies for years. Among his students was Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former Columbia Gaza encampment leader who last week defeated a longtime New York congressman on an anti-Israel platform and drew criticism for her refusal to condemn the Oct. 7 attacks. As an undergrad, she called Massad her favorite professor.
In Spring 2024, a visiting professor, Mohamad Abdou, was fired amid the Congressional hearings on campus antisemitism because of a social media post he made shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks that read: “I’m with the muqawamah [the resistance] be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.”
Activist faculty made headlines but also spoke to a broader reality, as identified by an internal Columbia University antisemitism task force that found in its December 2025 report that “Columbia lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy, and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist.”
The same report concluded: “Many Jewish and Israeli students reported that if they want to study the Middle East at Columbia, there currently are not enough options that don’t treat Zionism and Israel as fundamentally illegitimate.”
Exam questions
Students interviewed by the Forward describe experiences consistent with those findings. Zamir said he found Cohen’s course on Israel more balanced than Massad’s, though concluded the assigned readings disproportionately favored the Palestinian perspectives.
“To the Palestinian side, he would give entire chapters and long readings, and then for the pro-Israel side it would be mostly a few pages of an article,” said Zamir. “There’s one book that they did give to us that was a bit more pro-Israeli, but it was pro-Israeli in the bad sense, like it justified ethnic cleansing. It’s not the kind of thing that I would support.”
In Massad’s course, Zamir saw discussions of the conflict reflect a particular ideological viewpoint.
He recalled Massad questioning evidence of Hamas sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attacks and disputing claims that Hamas intentionally targets civilians. Zamir also found the questions on exams to be problematic. On one exam, Zamir said, two out of three questions had to do with how Zionism collaborated with the Nazis. On the final exam, one of three questions asked students whether Israel had the right to exist.
“Because he didn’t give any reason in class for why Israel should exist, it’s very hard to answer that question with anything other than ‘no,’” Zamir said. He said he drew on arguments he had learned outside the course to argue that Israel did have that right — and received full credit for the answer.
Zamir noted that despite their ideological differences, Massad made an effort to make him feel welcomed as the only Israeli in the class, even when fellow students didn’t.
Other students interested in the subject described similar difficulties finding courses they viewed as balanced.
“I was looking up every professor and looking pretty scrutinizingly through the description of every class,” said Zev Huneycutt, a rising senior majoring in Middle East studies, economics and political science.
“In the Middle East studies department, when I would look them up, and they’d have leveled this kind of crazy criticism of Israel, and it’s not stuff like, ‘I have some issues with current Israeli government policies,’ it’s stuff that goes a little farther than that. It’s delegitimizing, and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, I’m not taking that professor then.’”
In February, as part of the agreement with the federal government, Columbia published an internal review committee’s recommendations and commitments from several academic departments to enhance Middle East-focused offerings — almost all of which are set to occur outside the MESAAS department.
Indeed, the first recommendation from the review committee reads: “Expand coursework on the Middle East … by developing offerings that complement — and are clearly differentiated from — courses offered by MESAAS.”
Hochberg concludes that this is because MESAAS is already fulfilling its mandate. She noted that the department was “rigorously reviewed” both internally and externally in 2024 during the standard review process that takes place for every department at Columbia every eight years.
“It would be very strange to have another, and the university would never do that,” she said, adding that the review done in 2024 generated a file of 20 pages of recommendations detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the department. According to Hochberg, none of the recommendations made in internal and external reviews had to do with how Israel is taught at MESAAS.
Hochberg, who was born in Israel and identifies as an anti-Zionist, has previously taught courses on Israeli culture. Serving as chair of MESAAS for the past six years, she said, administrative responsibilities have required her to step back from teaching those courses, contributing to what she acknowledges as a gap in the department’s offerings on Israel.
She contends much of the criticism of an anti-Israel bias within MESAAS has been overblown. “It’s a very vigorous department,” she said. “The picture of it as being like a propaganda machine, it’s just not fair.”
Arab Studies search
Though Columbia has left MESAAS largely untouched, it has made additions to other departments and institutes, including bringing on a visiting professor in the economics department to teach about the Middle East, and arranging a visiting appointment in the History Department to teach the history of modern Israel. Its School of International and Public Affairs has appointed a visiting professor, jointly with Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, to teach on the Jewish world and Middle East policy with courses beginning this fall.
The university also plans to hire a new Edward Said Professor in Modern Arab Studies and Literature, a tenured position that was vacated last August by Rashid Khalidi, a leading scholar of Palestinian history. Khalidi cited the university’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism as part of its agreement with the federal government — which equates denying Jews their right to self-determination in Israel with antisemitism — as his reason for resigning.
One potential candidate, Max Weiss, was active in Princeton’s pro-Palestinian movement, serving as a spokesperson when faculty occupied Princeton’s Clio Hall in April 2024 and 13 people were arrested. Another, Rosie Bsheer, was removed from her leadership post at Harvard after she organized a panel that former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers described as “very likely” antisemitic under the IHRA definition.
The university also plans to launch a new undergraduate major in Global Affairs and Public Policy, which it says will expand Middle East course offerings. But the proposal has drawn criticism. In a June 15 statement, the Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate, a body that sets campus policy, questioned “the role of the Global Affairs and Public Policy major in regard to the federal resolution agreement’s commitment to offer politically prescribed curricula on the Middle East.”
To help expose students to a range of analyses of the Middle East, the internal review committee encouraged cross-listing among the Jewish studies institute, MESAAS and the proposed new program.
But this upcoming school year, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is offering several courses that pertain to the Middle East, including a course on the history of modern Israel and a course on Jews living in North Africa, that are not cross-listed with MESAAS. (The Institute’s director declined to speak with the Forward, saying that she does not discuss Columbia in the media.)
The only Israel-focused course that MESAAS will cross-list for the upcoming year is the sociology course taught by Cohen.
According to Hochberg, “There are absolutely no political barriers to including courses offered by Jewish and Israel studies in the department, and there never have been.”
She said, “I don’t think it’s a hostile relationship between MESAAS and IIJS. There’s just no substantial relationship. But we do cross-list some courses.”
For Zamir, Columbia’s new reforms are unlikely to address what he views as the underlying problem.
“Adding some classes in the Israel Institute won’t change things, because no one will take a class in the Israel Institute unless they are pro-Israeli to begin with,” he said. “If it’s in the Middle East department, it’s like ‘okay, well, it sounds neutral,’ even though it’s definitely not.”
Lishi Baker, who graduated this spring with a major in history and a specialization in the Middle East, said he largely built his Middle East studies education outside the MESAAS department. He sees the university’s efforts to expand Middle East offerings in other departments as a welcome development.
“A lot of people do what I did, which is study the Middle East through other departments,” Baker said.
He pieced together courses from the History Department, political science, policy school and Jewish studies, ultimately earning a minor in Jewish studies because many of the courses he took related to Israel did not count toward his major.
“I think now, the best place to study the Middle East at Columbia is everywhere but the Middle East Studies Department,” said Baker.
The post Columbia University pledged to revamp Mideast offerings. Students of the subject say fragmented courses fall short. appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: Literature scholar Nathan Cohen speaks about ‘shund’ literature
נתן כּהן, דער אָנגעזעענער פֿאָרשער פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור בײַם בר־אילן אוניווערסיטעט, האָט לעצטנס געהאַלטן אַ רעפֿעראַט אויף ייִדיש אין מינכן, דײַטשלאַנד, וועגן דער ייִדישער מאַסן־ליטעראַטור (דער עיקר, שונד־ליטעראַטור) צווישן 1860 און 1914.
דער נאָמען פֿונעם רעפֿעראַט, „ביכער פֿאַר אַלע“, איז געווען אַ רמז אויפֿן פֿאַרלאַג פֿונעם זעלבן נאָמען, וואָס זײַן שליחות איז געווען צו מאַכן די וועלטלעכע ייִדישע ליטעראַטור מער צוטריטלעך און וואָלוועלער פֿאַר די אָרעמע ייִדישע מאַסן.
די לעקציע, וואָס כּהן האָט געהאַלטן דעם 17טן יוני אינעם לודוויג־מאַקסימיליאַנס־אוניווערסיטעט, איז געווען טייל פֿון אַ יערלעכער טראַדיציע אין מינכן, אײַנגעפֿירט אין 2011 — דעם שלום־עליכם־רעפֿעראַט אין אָנדענק פֿון עוויטאַ וויעצקי, ז״ל. אַרום זיבעציק מענטשן זענען געקומען הערן דעם רעפֿעראַט, און נאָך אַ פֿופֿציק האָבן זיך צוגעהערט דורך דער אינטערנעץ. די אונטערנעמונג איז געשטיצט געוואָרן דורכן קולטור־צענטער פֿון דער מינכנער קהילה און דורך דער קושנער־פֿונדאַציע.
מיט אַ טאָג פֿריִער האָט כּהן געגעבן אַן אַרײַנפֿיר צו דער טעמע פֿאַר אַ גרופּע אָרטיקע ייִדיש־סטודענטן. ווי מע האָט געהערט פֿון די אָפּרופֿן נאָכן קלאַס, האָט נישט נאָר דער תּוכן, נאָר אויך כּהנס אופֿן רעדן גופֿא פֿאַרכאַפּט די תּלמידים. בײַ עטלעכע סטודענטן איז דאָס געווען צום ערשטן מאָל וואָס זיי הערן אַ גאַנצענע לעקציע אויף ייִדיש, און דערצו נאָך – פֿון אַן אומבאַקאַנטן לערער.
אינעם רעפֿעראַט גופֿא דעם צווייטן טאָג האָט כּהן אָנגעהויבן מיט אַ היסטאָרישן אַרײַנפֿיר, דערקלערנדיק ווי אַזוי און ווען עס האָט זיך אָנגעהויבן פֿאַרשפּרייטן די ייִדיש־וועלטלעכע ליטעראַטור און וואָסער ראָלע האָט אין דעם געשפּילט די ייִדישע פּרעסע, אָנהייבנדיק מיטן אַמאָליקן ייִדישן וואָכנבלאַט „קול מבֿשׂר“.
אין צוואַנציקסטן יאָרהונדערט האָבן זיך די ייִדישע צײַטונגען גענומען פֿאַרשפּרייטן אַלץ מער און מער. אין וואַרשע אין 1906 האָט מען אַרויסגעגעבן אַ סך מער ייִדיש־שפּראַכיקע צײַטשריפֿטן ווי העברעיִשע אָדער פּויליש־ייִדישע. האָבן די ייִדישע צײַטונגען געמוזט אויסהאַלטן אַ שטאַרקע קאָנקורענץ, און איין מיטל אין קאַמף איז געווען צו דרוקן די ראָמאַנען אין המשכים (אָדער, ווי מע פֿלעגט עס רופֿן אויפֿן דײַטשמערישן שטייגער – „אין פֿאָרזעצונגען“). אַ בולטער בײַשפּיל פֿון אַזאַ „ראָמאַנען“־קאָנקורענץ געפֿינט מען אין די צוויי וואַרשעווער טאָגצײַטונגען, „הײַנט“ און „מאָמענט“.
די לעקציע האָט כּהן אילוסטרירט מיט אָן אַ שיעור בילדער, ניט נאָר פֿון די צײַטונגען, נאָר דער עיקר אויך פֿון די שיינע שער־בלעטלעך פֿון די אַרומגערעדטע ראָמאַנען; צווישן זיי — ניט ווייניק ווערק פֿון די ייִדישע „שונד“־מחברים אײַזיק־מאיר דיק און שמר. אָט נעמט למשל אַזאַ טיטל: „די בלינדע יתומה, אָדער צווישן טיגערן“ פֿון שמרן, געדרוקט אין 1892.
גרויס הנאה האָט דער עולם געהאַט קוקנדיק אויף ייִדישע באַאַרבעטונגען פֿון אַזעלכע באַקאַנטע ווערק ווי „שערלאָק האָלמס“, „ראָבינזאָן קרוזאָ“ און „מאַקס און מאָריץ“ — אַן אילוסטרירטע דײַטש־שפּראַכיקע דערציילונג פֿון 1865. כּהן האָט זיך באַזונדער אָפּגעשטעלט אויף די דעמאָלטיקע נאָרמעס פֿון איבערזעצן, אויף דער נטיה צו פֿאַרייִדישן פֿרעמדשפּראַכיקע ווערק: אָט הייסט למשל ראָבינזאַן קרוזאָס געפֿונענער חבֿר ניט „פֿרײַטיק“ ווי אין אַנדערע לשונות, נאָר דווקא „שבת“.
מיט פֿילצאָליקע קאָמישע בײַשפּילן האָט כּהן געפֿירט דעם עולם דורך דער געשיכטע פֿון ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, און בולט אָנגעוויזן ווי אַזוי זי האָט אַלע מאָל געזוכט אַ מיטל־ליניע צווישן די אַמביציעס און פֿאָדערונגען פֿון דער הויכער ליטעראַטור מיטן געוואַלדיקן נאָכפֿרעג בײַ די מאַסן נאָך אַ מער „צוטריטלעכער“ ליטעראַטור.
כּהן האָט אַזוי שיין און דראַמאַטיש באַשריבן די שונדראָמאַנען מיט זייערע סענסאַציאָנעלע קעפּלעך, אַז דער עולם איז שוין, דאַכט זיך, גרייט געווען צו קויפֿן און צו לייענען די ביכער. אַ שאָד וואָס קיין מוכר־ספֿרים איז דאָרטן ניט געווען!
דערצו האָבן אַ סך צוהערערס זיך געפֿרייט אַז זיי קענען הערן אַ לאַנגע לעקציע אויף ייִדיש. עטלעכע האָבן זיך אַפֿילו נאָכגעפֿרעגט וועגן ייִדיש־קורסן – וואָס דאָס איז אפֿשר די שענסטע פּעולה פֿון כּהנס רעפֿעראַט.
כאָטש מע האָט אין אָנהייב 20סטן יאָרהונדערט אָפֿט געהאַלטן ייִדיש פֿאַר אַ „זשאַרגאָן“ קען מען זאָגן אַז טיילווײַז „זשאַרגאָניזירט“ מען ייִדיש ביז הײַנט צו טאָג, ווײַל ס’רובֿ פֿונעם עולם אַסאָציִיִרט ייִדיש ראשית־כּל מיט מוזיק (און געוויינטלעך בלויז מיט איין געוויסן טיפּ מוזיק – קלעזמער) אָדער וויצן. מיט זײַן רעפֿעראַט האָט כּהן דערוויזן דעם היפּוך — אַז ייִדיש טויג יאָ פֿאַר אַן אַקאַדעמישער בינע, און אַז אַפֿילו וועגן אַזאַ „נידעריקער“ טעמע ווי שונד, קען אַ פּראָפֿעסאָר האַלטן אַן ערשטקלאַסיקע לעקציע.
כּדי צו הערן דעם גאַנצן רעפֿעראַט, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
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