The Democrats Court the Faithful and the Uncommitted; the Jewish Catskills, Old and New; a Poem by David Lehman; Parshat Eikev

[View this email in your browser]( August 21, 2024 • Av 17, 5784 [Advertisement](#) [The Democrats in Chicago]( The Tablet news desk files daily dispatches from the convention [BY ARMIN ROSEN AND PARK MACDOUGALD](#) [MARX WAS A JEW: A POEM]( It’s the turning point of The Stranger (1946), the moment Edward G. Robinson wakes up in the middle of the night knowing Orson Welles gave himself away by saying “Marx wasn’t a German, he was a Jew.” Only a Nazi would make the distinction, he reasons. On the other hand, in “On the Jewish Question” (1843), Karl Marx wrote that money is the jealous god of the Jews, turning men into commodities, hucksters all, look at them haggle. “The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew,” he wrote, and the road to a free world requires “the emancipation of humanity from Judaism.” So are you saying that a Jew can be anti-Semitic? Or that the Left has a love-hate history with the Jews, the hate reserved for (or projected onto) Israel, itself a concept in a cloudy world of concepts rather than a state containing millions of souls? And along comes a smartass academic pronoun to explain Marx’s essay is actually a critique of anti-Semitism. —David Lehman # [Back to the Future in the Catskills]( A weekend filled with Jewish food and a sense of community brought me back to the visits I remember from my childhood—but in a way that makes the Borscht Belt feel new again [BY JAMIE BETESH CARTER](#) LISTEN TO TABLET # SIVAN SAYS [Eikev]( Parshat Eikev is all about perspective AUGUST 21, 2024 # # This email was sent to you by [Tablet Magazine](#) Tablet Magazine | P.O. Box 20079 | New York, NY 10001 [Remove me from this list]( | [Forward to a Friend]( You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website, www.tabletmag.com. Tablet Magazine P.O. Box 20079 New York, NY 10001 USA Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp [Mailchimp Email Marketing](