The Tree of Life is extremely difficult to read. There is no ruminating about God here, no contrived conversations with Nazis that show their humanity, nor even any brave rebellion—at least, not until the very end. Instead there is confusion, starvation, denial, and sheer sadistic horror.

living in places where you are utterly vulnerable and cannot admit it.

his native Lithuanian shtetl, Ponievezh, was among the many Jewish towns forcibly evacuated during the First World War, catapulting him and hundreds of thousands of other Jewish refugees into modernity.

replacing temple rituals with equally ritualized blessings and prayers, study of Torah, and elaborately regulated interpersonal ethics. The sages frantically arguing about when and how to recite which prayers are survivors and descendants of survivors, remnants of a destroyed world.

Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism’s brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening—and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah antisemitism’s success.

Zuskin once explained that “my heart is captivated particularly by the image of the person who is derided and humiliated, but who loves life, even though he encounters obstacles placed before him through no fault of his own.”

“Fry was impossible to work with, mentally troubled, locked in himself,” Caldwell wrote. “But let us not forget that he was a prophet, too, and put himself in harm’s way to prevent the future he saw unrolling before him. Not the ideal person, maybe. But certainly the kind that every generation has always had too few of.”

The existence of Jews in any society is a reminder that freedom is possible, but only with responsibility—and that freedom without responsibility is no freedom at all.

And I remembered believing the various teachers and professors who assured me and my peers that the play wasn’t antisemitic, of course, just a product of its time—and the proof was that it was way better than Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, where the title character expresses his fondness for poisoning wells.