Drew Kaplan

Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, wine was the preferred fermented beverage in the upland regions of the southern Levant. The Holy Land is where two of the world’s major religions – Judaism and Christianity – originated, and their holy writings (“scriptures”) are a testament to the centrality of wine in faith and practice.

15 November 2020 Drew KaplanBeer

Whereas barley beer and beer goddesses reigned supreme in the lowlands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, wine was the preferred fermented beverage in the upland regions of the southern Levant. The Holy Land is where two[…]

The Mourner’s Kaddish “originated in a startlingly different theological landscape—one in which concern with post-mortem suffering and the responsibility of the living for the dead loomed large in belief and practice alike”

18 October 2020 Drew KaplanJewish

Whether the Mourner’s Kaddish was an overt response to the “Birth of Purgatory,” or whether both developments reflected broader, underlying tectonic shifts, it seems undeniable that the prayer that today functions as a means of[…]

“The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place”

16 September 2020 Drew KaplanModern Orthodoxy

The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place. More importantly, it widens the every growing[…]

“Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’, in 1977, which paid homage to the ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Buck Rogers’ serials of the thirties”

13 September 2020 Drew KaplanMovies

Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” in 1977, which paid homage to the “Flash Gordon” and “Buck Rogers” serials of the thirties. The project drew Wagner comparisons almost from the[…]

“It is probably no coincidence that the superhero emerged in the nineteen-thirties, at a time when totalitarian regimes were overrunning Europe and Russia”

13 September 2020 Drew KaplanUncategorized

Wagner’s master array of borrowed, modified, and reinvented archetypes—the wanderer on a ghost ship, the savior with no name, the cursed ring, the sword in the tree, the sword reforged, the novice with unsuspected powers—lurks[…]

“It is an astonishing cultural transformation: the “Ride” remade into an anthem of American supremacy. This displacement is of a piece with other troubling historical continuities of the postwar era: Nazi scientists migrating to America, Gestapo-style torture techniques resurfacing in Iraq, the cult of the sculpted body perpetuating Riefenstahl’s Aryan ideal”

13 September 2020 Drew KaplanMovies

It is an astonishing cultural transformation: the “Ride” remade into an anthem of American supremacy. This displacement is of a piece with other troubling historical continuities of the postwar era: Nazi scientists migrating to America,[…]

“‘Apocalypse’ soon became a military fetish object, its Wagner scene influencing real-life behavior”

13 September 2020 Drew KaplanMovies

The entrance of the main Valkyrie motif coincides with a wide shot of fourteen helicopters in flight. The soldiers ready their guns; Kilgore nods to the music. Another wide shot coincides with a gleaming B-major[…]

“The ‘Ride’ seems a foreordained choice for the helicopter operation in ‘Apocalypse Now'”

13 September 2020 Drew KaplanMovies

For decades before Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” aerial warfare had been stirring thoughts of the Valkyries and their “air-horses,” as Wagner called them. In Proust’s “Time Regained,” the Germanophile dandy Robert de Saint-Loup watches a zeppelin[…]

“The tradition of blessing a person to live to 120 years, as a way of wishing someone long life, only began in the last few hundred years”

23 August 202022 August 2020 Drew KaplanJewish

The tradition of blessing a person to live to 120 years, as a way of wishing someone long life, only began in the last few hundred years. The term ad me’ah ve’esrim appears in responsa[…]

“Had observers better grasped white anxieties unleashed by the growth of America’s nonwhite population and the two-term Presidency of Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 would have come as no surprise”

18 August 2020 Drew KaplanAmerica

Twenty years after Myrdal published his report, and five years after King travelled to India, the dream of seeing aggressive anti-discrimination legislation in America was realized: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Author: Drew Kaplan

The Mourner’s Kaddish “originated in a startlingly different theological landscape—one in which concern with post-mortem suffering and the responsibility of the living for the dead loomed large in belief and practice alike”

“The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place”

“Modern fantasy began with the release of George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’, in 1977, which paid homage to the ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Buck Rogers’ serials of the thirties”

“It is probably no coincidence that the superhero emerged in the nineteen-thirties, at a time when totalitarian regimes were overrunning Europe and Russia”

“‘Apocalypse’ soon became a military fetish object, its Wagner scene influencing real-life behavior”

“The ‘Ride’ seems a foreordained choice for the helicopter operation in ‘Apocalypse Now'”

“The tradition of blessing a person to live to 120 years, as a way of wishing someone long life, only began in the last few hundred years”

“Had observers better grasped white anxieties unleashed by the growth of America’s nonwhite population and the two-term Presidency of Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 would have come as no surprise”