From the Editor

Nadine Epstein

When I was a teenager, my Grandma Rose came to live with us in the New Jersey suburbs. After my grandfather died it had gradually become hard for this once strong-willed woman to live alone in their Brooklyn apartment. Thin, with pure white hair and startlingly blue eyes, she wandered aimlessly through the rooms of our ranch house, slowly fading from life.

I remember the day that she stopped speaking English. We were in my room, and she kept addressing me in Yiddish, even though I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying. I sat her on my bed and commenced English lessons as if I, imbued with the power of youth, could command her brain to remember. If I had been wiser, I might have realized that it no longer mattered what language she spoke. She was reliving her past—of pain, poverty and pogroms, conversing with people long dead.

I thought of Grandma Rose when I read Ellen Davis Sullivan’s “Yiddish Land,” a story about a thoroughly assimilated elderly man whose tongue suddenly ceases to be able to form English words. This winner of the 2007 Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Short Fiction Contest appears in this issue along with two others. First-place winner, “How Beautiful Are Your Tents, O Jacob,” by Joe Kraus, is a haunting parable that probes the subliminal depths of the assimilated Jewish mind. Do battered trunks, filled with our history, some that can be opened, others locked, reside in the Jewish soul? “Three Dreams,” by Andi Arnovitz, delves into this same Jewish well and discovers its power to foretell events. Arnovitz’s imagining of an Israel obliterated by Iranian nuclear bombs is not to be missed.

These stories explore something that Moment returns to often: the ancient river of Jewish thought that flows through the human subconscious. It touches all of us, even those of us who don’t spend much time thinking about Judaism. Amazingly resilient, its currents include faith, memory, wisdom and the pursuit of knowledge and justice.

One way this river bubbles to the surface is through literature. In celebration of Jewish Book Month, we asked Moment co-founder Elie Wiesel and eight of his fellow Nobel laureates about their favorite Jewish books. We asked the same question of the rabbis in our “Ask the Rabbis” section. Their selections are eclectic and occasionally unexpected, and I am sure that many of you will be inspired to add a few books to your reading list as a result. I know I was.

The subjects of our book reviews are as rich as ever: Maimonides, corporate culpability in the Holocaust and the radical Yiddish theater of the 1930s. To top it off, celebrated cookbook author Joan Nathan recounts the history of the beloved boiled bread known as the bagel.

Our cover story, “Meet Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, aka Jon Stewart” zeroes in on the host of The Daily Show and the last two Academy Award programs. For those of you who don’t know, yes, this icon of the Comedy Central cable channel is Jewish. A Jersey boy whom the New York Times recently called the “most trusted man in America,” he is at the forefront of modern political satire. Four nights a week, Stewart exposes the hypocrisy and general silliness of modern political and media culture. Our story explores his Jewish upbringing and the Jewish comedic tradition of speaking truth to power.

Standing up for truth is the theme of another story in this issue. Nearly seven years after the murder of Jewish American Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by Islamic extremists in Pakistan shocked the world, some very determined Georgetown University students are close to answering some of the questions still surrounding his death. The Pearl Project, as it is known, is led by Pearl’s friend and Journal colleague Asra Nomani, a child of Indian Muslim immigrants, who has been working tirelessly to unravel the mysteries that remain.

At Moment, we are also serious about providing meaningful opportunities to foster compassion and critical thinking in young people. That’s why we sponsor two contests for students. For children ages 9-13 there is Moment’s Publish-a-Kid book review contest (Deadline: December 8); high school students have the opportunity to weigh in on the major issues of our times in Moment’s You Can Save the World essay contest (Deadline: December 15). More information is available on our website, momentmag.com. Be sure to share the link with the teachers, parents and students you know.

We also have two extraordinary events coming up. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks, the judge of our fiction contest, will join us on December 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the historic B’nai Jeshurun Congregation at 257 West 88th St. in New York City to honor the winners. Back in Moment’s home city of Washington, DC, we will celebrate the winners of this year’s Emerging Writer Awards, giving out the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Handelsman Prize for Nonfiction. We join with the Foundation for Jewish Culture to present these awards at the Grand Hyatt Washington, 100 H St. NW, on December 22 at 6:30 p.m. Both events are absolutely free but you do need to register by RSVPing to grants@jewish culture.com or editor@momentmag.com or by calling 202-363-6422.

I look forward to meeting you, and in the meantime, be sure to visit our blog at momentmagblog.com for an intelligent and spirited exchange of ideas within the virtual Jewish world.