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Herbert Gold, novelist whose mined his own Jewish upbringing, dies at 99
(JTA) — In 1951, the writer Herbert Gold published “The Heart of an Artichoke,” a widely admired autobiographical story about his immigrant Jewish father and the grocery store he ran in a suburb of Cleveland.
When the story was left out of the 1963 anthology “Great Jewish Short Stories,” he complained to the volume’s editor, his friend and future Nobelist Saul Bellow.
“I said, Saul, you told me how much you loved ‘The Heart of the Artichoke,’” Gold recalled in a 2018 interview with the Paris Review. “But then he just said, I forgot.”
Gold, a prolific, San Francisco-based novelist who died Nov. 19 at age 99, never enjoyed the commercial success or name recognition of other post-war Jewish writers, including Bellow, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, but he was widely admired for books that, among others things, explored Jewish-American identity through the lens of his own experience. They included the 1967 bestseller “Fathers” — a “memoir as fiction” about growing up in Cleveland — and a sequel, “Family,” published in 1981. His 1972 book “My Last Two Thousand Years” describes a trip to Israel, where the writer rediscovers his Jewish heritage.
As a journalist, he covered Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War for publications as diverse as Playboy and the Wall Street Journal.
In a essay he wrote in 1961, “Death in Miami Beach,” he contemplated his own mortality on a series of visits to what he described as a haven for “exiled Cubans, local hot-rodders and their gum-chewing molls, sportsmen, natty invalids in gabardine, drunks, stockbrokers, antique collectors, semites and anti-semites all taking the air together on Lincoln Road.” Admirers of the essay included Vladimir Nabokov, who chose Gold to succeed him as a lecturer on Russian literature at Cornell University.
“Herbert Gold’s particular strength as a writer is the intimacy of detail that he establishes between himself and the reader,” a reviewer, the novelist Jerome Charyn, wrote in 1981. “At its best, his language sways with a litany of song, and his characters have a special kind of vulnerability. He writes about growing old in America and the ritual of falling out of love.”
Gold was born in the Lakewood suburb of Cleveland, where his father Samuel, an immigrant from Ukraine, ran a fruit store and later a grocery store. Growing up, Gold told the Paris Review, “I felt a lot of antisemitism. But being the only Jew in the school had advantages, because sex was forbidden. Sex was work of the devil, and Jews were the work of the devil. So girls liked me. I was popular in a funny way.”
He enlisted in the Army during World War II, serving stateside, and later earned a degree at Columbia University. There he became friends with the poet Allen Ginsberg, who introduced Gold to his circle of Beat writers.
Gold also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship, where his friends and acquaintances included Bellow and the African-American writers Richard Wright and James Baldwin. The first of his 30 books, “Birth of a Hero,” was published with Bellow’s help by Viking in 1951.
Gold was married and divorced twice. He is survived by four children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren,
A fixture in San Francisco, where he moved in 1960 to write and teach, Gold was active well into his 90s: An anthology, “Best American Poetry of 2023,” includes one of his poems. According to his website, a new book, “Father Verses Sons,” is scheduled for March 2024.
In 2021, he was interviewed by J., the Jewish weekly serving the Bay Area. “I’m very preoccupied with the fact that I’m not going to live forever,” he said. Death “is inevitable and I have to accept it. I’m comforted by the fact that a few people, my children, will remember me or will inherit something from me, and I will be immortal in that sense.”
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
The post Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
The post Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.