Is There a Cure for Anti-Semitism?
Rabbi David Woznicka:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is
my privilege to welcome you to the 92nd Street Y, to the last of this
year's evening events.
I want to thank
Partisan Review
for cosponsoring these discussions,
and for providing our moderators, both Mr. William Phillips and Dr.
Edith Kurzweil, Editor and Executive Editor, respectively, of
Partisan
Review.
And I want to thank them for being here and for helping to ar–
range this evening. Tomorrow morning, as many of you know, there is
a continuation of this discussion. With that, I shall step aside and ask you
to join me in welcoming this evening's panelists.
William Phillips:
Welcome to a hot subject on a cool evening. The
speakers are all pretty well known to you, but I'll remind you of some
facts about them. The first speaker will be Saul Bellow, University
Professor and Professor of English at Boston University. He is a Nobel
laureate in Literature, and the author of many great novels which I am
sure most of you have read. He is, if I may venture an opinion at this
point, probably the best American writer. He is also the recipient of
many other awards, including a Pulitzer Prize.
The second speaker will be John Gross, who is a theater critic of the
London
Sunday Telegraph
and a frequent contributor to the
Times
Literary Supplement
and other publications. He is the author of
The Rise
and Fall oj the Man oj Letters,
and his newest book, which bears, of
course, on this subject, is called
Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy.
The third speaker will be Cynthia Ozick, whose highly praised novels
include
Cannibal Galaxy, The Messiah oj Stockholm, The Shawl,
and
Trust.
I thought you would want to know, too, that she has written a
play about the denial of the Holocaust, called
Blue Light.
It will be
directed by Sidney Lumet and will star Diane Wiest, opening this
summer, August 10th, at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New
York, so you must all go and see the play.
Saul Bellow:
"A Jewish Writer." A word about the title of this talk: It
deals with an aspect of my personal history and the substantiali ty of the
Editor's Note: " Is There a Cure for Anti-Semitism?" was first presented as
"Writers and Editors Discuss Anti-Semitism," a symposium held on May 5th and
6th, 1994, in New York City, with the cooperation of the 92nd Street Y–
YMHA.
