The discussion about having children is a very good discussion because not only is it a way of achieving immortality but if you are courageous, bold, independent, thoughtful, gracious, nurturing, encouraging, secure and confident, with very little if any self doubt in your abilities, you pass all those forward to your kids and they pass them forward to their kids. Now the kids have their own identity and characteristics but they will add their own characteristics to whatever ones you pass forward to them just as you may have added on to whatever characteristics your parents have forwarded to you. And parents need to love their significant other so very much or at least enough so that the kids realize that traditional love is still possible for them in their lives. The alienation that T.S. Eliot writes about is not only inability to communicate but inability to even have a discussion about anything which is the deep polarization of today. But to some people it's all also a failure of being able to offer love and respect or enough of it so you could talk about anything, find even a tiny bit of agreement somewhere so that a potential great mom or dad doesn't end up shutting themselves out into a solitary aloneness. And I think T.S. Eliot foresaw this polarizing alienation as a modern malady. So the poetry of Girl Soldier, like that of T.S. Eliot is dealing with the reality of now. And the failure of love is kind of unspoken in Sylvia Plath's poetry is the silent destruction of a man's ego and overvaluation of himself and his resentment of a woman's intellect is very specifically detailed in an aesthetic way which brings understanding but in no way lessens the overall damage.
I think some education for everyone on Jewish history would be appropriate in light of what was discussed in the latter half of this video so here’s some resources for everyone:
Books:
• A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
• Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• A History of Judaism by Martin Goodman
• The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China by Jonathan Kaufman
• Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis
• Our Crime was Being Jewish: Hundreds of Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Stories by Anthony S. Pitch
• The Jewish South: An American History by Shari Rubin
Thanks so much for listing all the books that present Jewish history and courageous Jewish people within Jewish history. Few people know of Jewish Hindi cinema actor, David. In Jewish culture and in India's culture, children are very important. David's story is amazing. He never married or had children. In India a child's aunty or uncle is often very important in a child's life. David's most remembered for his portrayal of an incredible uncle in the old Hindi film, Boot Polish. There is an orphan boy and girl left by their father with a dissolute aunty who is horrible to them. Nobody cares about them except for the character played by David. He feels their pain and encourages them with hope that all the wretchedness they have to endure will one day end. That character reflected Jewish values similar to India's cultural values regarding family and children. So Soldier Girl indirectly reflects these values and many others. In these times poetry like that in Soldier Girl delves into Jewish values but also shows how these values or similar ones are shared with people whose culture is not Jewish but shares and benefits from having very similar values. Here is a link to find more about David to go with your list. Your comments always go to the truth of whatever is being discussed in a post, a book or a podcast like this one.
Apologies. This article may be paywalled, but you may be able to completely read it if you read the whole thing after tapping the link. Or by signing up to receive 6 articles a month.
Oh wow, where to start! This was an absolutely epic interview with the incredibly talented Liza Libes, Ted! Thank you for letting me know you got the idea to do this interview from my suggestion. It’s good to know you can help the Substack writers you follow and admire. Also, my apologies about all the IG DMs, I didn’t mean to be annoying. Liza’s book Girl Soldier is in my opinion, the biggest thing to hit literature since the Harry Potter Series first hit store shelves twenty-four years ago. Liza is the also in my view, the best new author on the literary scene since J.K. Rowling. Seriously! In a just and sane world, Barnes & Noble would be doing midnight releases of Girl Soldier with fans of Pens and Poison lined up around the block waiting to buy it. Her poems are absolutely amazing and many have touched me personally. On the one about women and having children, it seems like Liza is describing the choice posed to every woman these days, have a career or have a family. Liza is 28 and I can tell from the poem and her tearing up she is afraid she’s running out of time and will never have a son or daughter to pass the love of literature her grandmother instilled in her to.
First off, maximum child bearing age is 40. So Liza still has plenty of time. If you should ever read this post, Liza don’t give up and don’t agonize over this! Just give it time and that day will come when you will have your own little bundle of joy. You will one day be teaching your son or daughter about Shakespeare, Eliot, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, and all the great Russian poets. The line about the music playing but only one can hear it resonates with me deeply. I have autism and I interact and interpret the world and people around me very different from the majority of the population. I was born not hearing the music that most people are and need to learn how to hear it. I also resonated with what Liza said that you develop an emotional connection with someone because they remind you of your childhood. They take you back in some way.
I’ve never said this openly before, but the reason I to an extent, feel an emotional connection with Liza is because her love of literature and the arts and reminding us what their all about and providing us with a space to explore ideas reminded we of when I was a preteen/teen and was really interested in the Humanities and was open to learning new things, meeting new people and discussing ideas. But bad experiences with prejudiced students and adults and the left-wing ideology conformity of college made me lose those parts of myself. I didn’t feel I was welcome in the Humanities, didn’t trust people and didn’t feel I could ever openly express my opinions.
Meeting and getting to know Liza, helped me open back up as a human being and restore that part of myself and she has taught me to never dim my light for anyone. I’m so sorry for how you and Liza’s so-called “friends” have treated you and just abandoned you guys purely because of your ethnicity and religion. October 7th showed that antisemitism in the West was not dead, just dormant. Your anti-Zionist “friends” are like the Bundists of the 20th Century. Idealistic idiots who are totally out of touch with reality. I would urge Liza to distance herself from her friends who are pro-Palestine. I despise Bibi just as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t support Israel in their war against the Nazis of the 21st Century, Hamas.
Zionism means that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancient homeland. Period. Full stop. As a Lutheran ally of the Jewish community, I understand this well. Zionism means Jews have a safe haven. It doesn’t mean that the Palestinians can’t have a state of their own too. Liza’s best friend acted like an a** toward her and accused her of supporting genocide. I didn’t know they had a blow out argument. That was so sad to hear! Liza not having her best friend at her wedding because of an over seventy-year old political and religious conflict is just so tragic and heartbreaking. Ironically, the two’s cultures and faiths have much in common. Her friend leaving her on red is appalling. Her best friend should be absolutely ashamed of herself!
Your former friends are also total a**** for treating you the way they did, Ted! Your a really nice guy with a marvelous brain from what I saw in this video and from how you’ve treated me. You’re also right 1000% that everything is getting worse. Hollywood sucks! Period. End of story. Name me any movie today that will endure the way Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, The General, It’s A Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Animal Crackers, The Great Dictator, Modern Times, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Graduate, Easy Rider, Batman, Pulp Fiction, Dirty Harry, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Clueless, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Clockwork Orange, the original Star Wars trilogy, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Midnight Cowboy, Rear Window, Vertigo, JFK, The Untouchables, Patriot Games, The Godfather, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The French Connection, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park, and The Land Before Time have.
Name one TV show as good as gems like The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gunsmoke, Wanted! Dead or Alive, The Rifleman, The Rockford Files, Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Kojak, Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-O, Perry Mason, Beverly Hills 90210, Saved by the Bell, Numbers, Scooby Doo Where are You!, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Looney Tunes, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, Threes a Crowd, Mission: Impossible, Mork and Mindy, Combat!, The Rat Patrol, Hogan’s Heroes, Inch High Private Eye, Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers, The Funky Phantom, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Batman, The Adventures of Superman, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Do you know of any musician alive today who even holds a candle to the likes of Elvis Presley, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Criss Cross, Louie Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Celine Dion, Phil Collins, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Patsy Cline, Little Richard, Smokey Robinson, or Selena?
The discussion about having children is a very good discussion because not only is it a way of achieving immortality but if you are courageous, bold, independent, thoughtful, gracious, nurturing, encouraging, secure and confident, with very little if any self doubt in your abilities, you pass all those forward to your kids and they pass them forward to their kids. Now the kids have their own identity and characteristics but they will add their own characteristics to whatever ones you pass forward to them just as you may have added on to whatever characteristics your parents have forwarded to you. And parents need to love their significant other so very much or at least enough so that the kids realize that traditional love is still possible for them in their lives. The alienation that T.S. Eliot writes about is not only inability to communicate but inability to even have a discussion about anything which is the deep polarization of today. But to some people it's all also a failure of being able to offer love and respect or enough of it so you could talk about anything, find even a tiny bit of agreement somewhere so that a potential great mom or dad doesn't end up shutting themselves out into a solitary aloneness. And I think T.S. Eliot foresaw this polarizing alienation as a modern malady. So the poetry of Girl Soldier, like that of T.S. Eliot is dealing with the reality of now. And the failure of love is kind of unspoken in Sylvia Plath's poetry is the silent destruction of a man's ego and overvaluation of himself and his resentment of a woman's intellect is very specifically detailed in an aesthetic way which brings understanding but in no way lessens the overall damage.
I think some education for everyone on Jewish history would be appropriate in light of what was discussed in the latter half of this video so here’s some resources for everyone:
Books:
• A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
• Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• A History of Judaism by Martin Goodman
• The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China by Jonathan Kaufman
• Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis
• Our Crime was Being Jewish: Hundreds of Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Stories by Anthony S. Pitch
• The Jewish South: An American History by Shari Rubin
Films/Documentaries:
• School Ties
• Image Before My Eyes
• A Yiddish World Remembered
• Schindler’s List
• Holocaust Miniseries
• Shoah
• Frontline: Memory of the Camps
• Israel: A Nation is Born
• A Woman Called Golda
• Ken Burns: America and The Holocaust
Noah,
Thanks so much for listing all the books that present Jewish history and courageous Jewish people within Jewish history. Few people know of Jewish Hindi cinema actor, David. In Jewish culture and in India's culture, children are very important. David's story is amazing. He never married or had children. In India a child's aunty or uncle is often very important in a child's life. David's most remembered for his portrayal of an incredible uncle in the old Hindi film, Boot Polish. There is an orphan boy and girl left by their father with a dissolute aunty who is horrible to them. Nobody cares about them except for the character played by David. He feels their pain and encourages them with hope that all the wretchedness they have to endure will one day end. That character reflected Jewish values similar to India's cultural values regarding family and children. So Soldier Girl indirectly reflects these values and many others. In these times poetry like that in Soldier Girl delves into Jewish values but also shows how these values or similar ones are shared with people whose culture is not Jewish but shares and benefits from having very similar values. Here is a link to find more about David to go with your list. Your comments always go to the truth of whatever is being discussed in a post, a book or a podcast like this one.
Source: Haaretz https://share.google/4ybCPzXX3K1YqMw4P
Apologies. This article may be paywalled, but you may be able to completely read it if you read the whole thing after tapping the link. Or by signing up to receive 6 articles a month.
Oh wow, where to start! This was an absolutely epic interview with the incredibly talented Liza Libes, Ted! Thank you for letting me know you got the idea to do this interview from my suggestion. It’s good to know you can help the Substack writers you follow and admire. Also, my apologies about all the IG DMs, I didn’t mean to be annoying. Liza’s book Girl Soldier is in my opinion, the biggest thing to hit literature since the Harry Potter Series first hit store shelves twenty-four years ago. Liza is the also in my view, the best new author on the literary scene since J.K. Rowling. Seriously! In a just and sane world, Barnes & Noble would be doing midnight releases of Girl Soldier with fans of Pens and Poison lined up around the block waiting to buy it. Her poems are absolutely amazing and many have touched me personally. On the one about women and having children, it seems like Liza is describing the choice posed to every woman these days, have a career or have a family. Liza is 28 and I can tell from the poem and her tearing up she is afraid she’s running out of time and will never have a son or daughter to pass the love of literature her grandmother instilled in her to.
First off, maximum child bearing age is 40. So Liza still has plenty of time. If you should ever read this post, Liza don’t give up and don’t agonize over this! Just give it time and that day will come when you will have your own little bundle of joy. You will one day be teaching your son or daughter about Shakespeare, Eliot, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, and all the great Russian poets. The line about the music playing but only one can hear it resonates with me deeply. I have autism and I interact and interpret the world and people around me very different from the majority of the population. I was born not hearing the music that most people are and need to learn how to hear it. I also resonated with what Liza said that you develop an emotional connection with someone because they remind you of your childhood. They take you back in some way.
I’ve never said this openly before, but the reason I to an extent, feel an emotional connection with Liza is because her love of literature and the arts and reminding us what their all about and providing us with a space to explore ideas reminded we of when I was a preteen/teen and was really interested in the Humanities and was open to learning new things, meeting new people and discussing ideas. But bad experiences with prejudiced students and adults and the left-wing ideology conformity of college made me lose those parts of myself. I didn’t feel I was welcome in the Humanities, didn’t trust people and didn’t feel I could ever openly express my opinions.
Meeting and getting to know Liza, helped me open back up as a human being and restore that part of myself and she has taught me to never dim my light for anyone. I’m so sorry for how you and Liza’s so-called “friends” have treated you and just abandoned you guys purely because of your ethnicity and religion. October 7th showed that antisemitism in the West was not dead, just dormant. Your anti-Zionist “friends” are like the Bundists of the 20th Century. Idealistic idiots who are totally out of touch with reality. I would urge Liza to distance herself from her friends who are pro-Palestine. I despise Bibi just as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t support Israel in their war against the Nazis of the 21st Century, Hamas.
Zionism means that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancient homeland. Period. Full stop. As a Lutheran ally of the Jewish community, I understand this well. Zionism means Jews have a safe haven. It doesn’t mean that the Palestinians can’t have a state of their own too. Liza’s best friend acted like an a** toward her and accused her of supporting genocide. I didn’t know they had a blow out argument. That was so sad to hear! Liza not having her best friend at her wedding because of an over seventy-year old political and religious conflict is just so tragic and heartbreaking. Ironically, the two’s cultures and faiths have much in common. Her friend leaving her on red is appalling. Her best friend should be absolutely ashamed of herself!
Your former friends are also total a**** for treating you the way they did, Ted! Your a really nice guy with a marvelous brain from what I saw in this video and from how you’ve treated me. You’re also right 1000% that everything is getting worse. Hollywood sucks! Period. End of story. Name me any movie today that will endure the way Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, The General, It’s A Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Animal Crackers, The Great Dictator, Modern Times, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Graduate, Easy Rider, Batman, Pulp Fiction, Dirty Harry, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Clueless, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Clockwork Orange, the original Star Wars trilogy, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Midnight Cowboy, Rear Window, Vertigo, JFK, The Untouchables, Patriot Games, The Godfather, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The French Connection, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park, and The Land Before Time have.
Name one TV show as good as gems like The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gunsmoke, Wanted! Dead or Alive, The Rifleman, The Rockford Files, Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Kojak, Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-O, Perry Mason, Beverly Hills 90210, Saved by the Bell, Numbers, Scooby Doo Where are You!, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Looney Tunes, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, Threes a Crowd, Mission: Impossible, Mork and Mindy, Combat!, The Rat Patrol, Hogan’s Heroes, Inch High Private Eye, Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers, The Funky Phantom, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Batman, The Adventures of Superman, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Do you know of any musician alive today who even holds a candle to the likes of Elvis Presley, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Criss Cross, Louie Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Celine Dion, Phil Collins, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Patsy Cline, Little Richard, Smokey Robinson, or Selena?