Forward.com

Reassembling the Balkan PuzzleIn the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, the cityscapes are dotted with evidence of the wanderers, invaders and empires that have crisscrossed this region throughout the centuries. Medieval monasteries built by native Slavs in the ninth century stand alongside fortresses built by Bulgarian generals shortly thereafter. Orthodox churches flank Turkish mosques, Roma settlements are only but a short walk from Byzantine remains and — as is expected in most distant European locales — Jewish history, culture and sometimes even some actual Jews reside quietly in the background.
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The Ambivalent ReporterModern journalism, especially as practiced in America, utilizes what is perhaps the most stifling literary form ever conceived outside of metric poetry. In our daily papers we have reduced our attempts at instantaneous history to the rubric of “news,” with a set style and paragraph order. Those of our pages that don’t adhere to these guidelines are either culturally marginal or celebrity tabloids. I am mentioning this only to delay beginning an essay about Karl Kraus.
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The Yiddishe Mame of FeminismThat the great foremothers of feminism, the first wave of the movement, included in their midst an outspoken Polish Jew is not a fact often revealed in what meager suffragist history is passed along. Amid the large-looming names of the women’s suffrage movement in America, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and the Grimké sisters, Ernestine L. Rose is a figure far less known, despite having worked with all these women and with many of the big names of the free-thought, abolitionist and feminist movements. Rose was unusual for both her time and place, but she was firm in her beliefs, blunt with her opinions and, most important, a fiery public speaker.
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