Speaking of Hassidim (and Pissaro) Word from: Jake

Apparently as of late, Hassidim have not only been making their way into fashion commercials, but also into certain high-profile literary-bent publications. Allegra Goodman, author of Kaaterskill Falls and Family Markowitz, had a story in the New Yorker, take a look. I'm not going to spoil it for you (especially since the whole plot can be summarized in two sentences) but I'll just say that there's a quirky unexpected split in the narrative towards the end. Here's one quick quote:

He lived in Canaan, almost halfway between Boston and Providence, on Fuller Circle, a small road linking Emerson and Thoreau Streets. The street names lent a literary air to the modest Capes and white ranch houses in the neighborhood, although the only transcendentalists who had ever taken up residence in the town were the Bialystoker Hasidim, who had set up house on Alcott. These Bialystokers, Rabbi Zylberfenig and his wife and children, had been sent as emissaries from Brooklyn to return the unaffiliated Jews of Canaan to Judaism.

And my favorite bit:

It was only Tuesday afternoon, and the pain was already rising again. He thought of it as the pain now, not his pain but a larger, impersonal force. The pain - the way opera singers speak of their instrument, the voice.

While we talking New Yorker there's also that Cezanne-Pissaro article about the MOMA exhibit. It's scathing as far as Pissaro goes, which is moderately disappointing just because Pissaro was a Sephardic Jew, but what can you do - the author's probably right in calling the exhibit

a pitiless comparison of stylistically related painters, one great and one just very good, with results that are instructive - providing vigorous exercise for the thinking eye - while sort of painful.

But you can check out the two masters for yourself, if you haven't yet already, either in person or online.

Photo of Allegra Goodman copyright © Marion Ettlinger