Roberto Bolaño's fiction: An expanding universe; David Foster Wallace and ‘The long thing’: new essays on the novels; The Maximalist novel: from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow to Roberto Bolaño's 2666

Review Essay: Chris Andrews, Roberto Bolaño's Fiction: An Expanding Universe Marshall Boswell ed., David Foster Wallace and ‘The Long Thing’: New Essays on the Novels Stefano Ercolino, The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow to Roberto Bolaño's 266

Review of Charles Berlin, \u3cem\u3eHarvard Judaica in the 21st Century\u3c/em\u3e

In 2004, Dr. Charles Berlin, Lee M. Friedman Bibliographer in Judaica and Head of the Judaica Division of the Harvard Library, published a blue, cloth-bound volume entitled Harvard Judaica (Berlin 2004) to mark the fortieth anniversary of the start of the programmatic development of the Harvard University Library’s Judaica collections (1962–2002).1 This new, school-colored crimson, also hardback volume, Harvard Judaica in the 21st Century, published a decade later, may be read both as a sequel and also as a prequel. Where the fortieth anniversary volume was understated and reflective; the latter is celebratory and future oriented even as both look back on past achievements. If the 2004 volume is mostly about the history of a collection and its development, the 2014 jubilee volume is a tribute to the people who made it great. It also is self-consciously presented in the introduction as an “ethical will” by its founder to future stewards of the collection. This bequest is not only material, but also spiritual. It is an effort to share a lifetime of wisdom and practical experience and a hope for the future

Letting Down the Drawbridge: Restoration of the Right to Protest At Parliament

This article analyses the history of the prohibition of protests around Parliament under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. This prohibited any demonstrations of one or more persons within one square kilometre of the Houses of Parliament unless permission had been obtained in writing from the police in advance. This measure both formed part of a pattern of the then Labour Government to restrict protest and increase police powers, and was symbolically important in restricting protest that was directed at politicians at a time when politicians have been very unpopular. The Government of Tony Blair had been embarrassed by a one-man protest by peace campaigner, Brian Haw. In response to sustained defiance, Mr. Blair’s successor as Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs pledged to remove the restrictions, but this was not acted on by Parliament until September 2011. This article argues that the original restrictions were unnecessary, and that the much narrower successor provisions could be improved by being drafted more specifically

Heralds of Duty: The Sephardic Italian Jewish Theological Seminary of Sabato Morais

The institutional history of the Jewish Theological Seminary has mostly been told in relation to the emergence of the Conservative movement of Judaism in the United States and in relation to the Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar after which it was named, founded by Zecharias Frankel in 1854. The biography and religious outlook of the first president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a Sephardic Italian Jew named Sabato Morais (1823-1897), are mined as sources for exploring an alternative account. This essay argues for ideological and institutional discontinuity between the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), founded in 1886 and the re-organized seminary incorporated under the name The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in 1902. Morais’s program of rabbinical education was not solely a response to American conditions of religious reform and insular orthodoxy; nor was it a moderate compromise between the two. Morais’s Seminary was consistent with the educational program of enlightened observant Sephardic and Italian Jewish traditions in which he was raised and which he had taught throughout his nearly half-century ministry in Philadelphia (1851-1897). In articulating the character of the JTS, Morais placed the values of duty and humility at the core of his rabbinical training program. His program, its historical and religious specificity, may be contrasted with other Jewish orthodoxies during his time. The afterlife of Morais’s religious outlook is then explored via JTS\u27s two most famous graduates, Joseph Hertz, chief rabbi of the British Empire and Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judais

Review of Stefan C. Reif, \u3cem\u3eA Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University\u27s Genizah Collection\u3c/em\u3e

One of the most spectacular yet quiet revolutions in the modern study of the history of the Mediterranean world has resulted from the recovery just over a hundred years ago of the contents of an attic storehold in the Ben Ezra Synagogue of Old Cairo. The Cairo genizah (the technical, religious term applied to a storage area for consigning, or hiding away the worn remains of texts considered narrowly or generally sacred, or even heretical, but in either case unfit for ritual use), has yielded an unprecedented cache of more than 200,000 fragmentary documents, most of which date from the 9th through the 15th centuries CE. The story of a major part of this treasure trove, its origins, rediscovery and relocation from Cairo to Cambridge University, and the significance of its contents is the subject of this much needed survey by Stefan C. Reif

[Review] Rebecca Tillett, ed. (2014) Howling for justice: new perspectives on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the dead

Review Essay for 'Occupations' issue of Excursions