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The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews (Jewish Encounters)
by
David Mamet
David Mamet's interest in anti-Semitism is not limited to the modern face of an ancient hatred but encompasses as well the ways in which many Jews have internalized that hatred. Using the metaphor of the Wicked Son at the Passover seder (the child who asks, "What does this story mean to you?") Mamet confronts what he sees as an insidious predilection among some Jews to ex...more
Paperback, 208 pages
Published
September 15th 2009
by Schocken
(first published October 10th 2006)
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David Mamet's "The Wicked Son" is an interesting condemnation of modern, "social Jewery" (self-identifying Jews who don't practice the religion). Where many modern Jews see a lack of spirituality in Judaism, Mamet sees a lack of spirituality (and faith and pride and self-respect) in modern Jews.
Mamet's arguments aren't nuanced, but they do have a certain logic. What's disappointing is that while someone like Rodger Kamenetz sees a path into Judaism from outside re...more
Mamet's arguments aren't nuanced, but they do have a certain logic. What's disappointing is that while someone like Rodger Kamenetz sees a path into Judaism from outside re...more
When Krusty The Clown turns holier-than-thou.
David Mamet is pure Hollywood, just like Krusty on the SIMPSONS. For thirty years he was one of the boys, (and that rhymes with goys) a screenwriter who knew how to grease the wheels and get along with powerful people. High stakes poker. Dirty jokes. Night after night of smoking cigars, shtupping blondes, doing lines of blow with Marty, scripting soulful masterpieces like HOFFA and THE UNTOUCHABLES and generally making the most of a life ...more
David Mamet is pure Hollywood, just like Krusty on the SIMPSONS. For thirty years he was one of the boys, (and that rhymes with goys) a screenwriter who knew how to grease the wheels and get along with powerful people. High stakes poker. Dirty jokes. Night after night of smoking cigars, shtupping blondes, doing lines of blow with Marty, scripting soulful masterpieces like HOFFA and THE UNTOUCHABLES and generally making the most of a life ...more
David Mamet may write good plays, but don’t get near his writings on Judaism; they’re toxic. This is an updated version of Rabbi Kahane’s extremist classic “Never Again”—both are incoherent racist, bizarre, paranoid, bullying and self-righteous. Without any evidence (save one quote from Chomsky) or nuance, Mamet delivers a screed against a mythical beast called the “self-hating Jew” who abandons Torah and tradition and condemns the State of Israel. As in his terrible movie “Homicide” he asserts ...more
So, let me get this straight: thinking critically about Israel is anti-semetic?
I have a real problem with the idea that embracing my religious and cultural identity means blindly supporting the political agenda of a country with which I have no real connection, and which routinely violates human rights in the name of "defending itself." While I don't deny that anti-semetism is real (and, as long as we're mincing words, includes anti-Arab sentiment, as they are technicall...more
I have a real problem with the idea that embracing my religious and cultural identity means blindly supporting the political agenda of a country with which I have no real connection, and which routinely violates human rights in the name of "defending itself." While I don't deny that anti-semetism is real (and, as long as we're mincing words, includes anti-Arab sentiment, as they are technicall...more
A really interesting and thought-provoking read, but I keep finding myself disagreeing with Mamet. He asserts that Jews have bought in to the world's hatred of them and have become anti-Semitic themselves, doing their best to separate themselves from their religion and culture, and assimilate into the Western world. My Jewishness is one that is very different from Mamet's, but it has been my experience that many Jews remove themselves from their religion while clinging to their ethnic and cult...more
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Wow! First off, this should be a 3.5, not a four, but you can't do that on this system. Provocative and well-written as always (if you can get past the 20th grade reading level words), I found this book easy to get through (short chapters) but incredibly challenging to process. While I am in many ways, but not entirely, the Wicked Son Mamet refers to, his points mostly strengthened my own convictions. Sort of the way I feel after reading Bill O'Reilly. There were certainly, however, some ex...more
My reasons for liking this book are not entirely in keeping with the author's intentions. I disagree with Mamet's nationalism and understanding of race (there is no excuse for propagating the fiction of race in 2009... we know a lot about human genetics, and everything we know reveals race to be a terrible lie). I disagree with his Zionist theology. I disagree with almost every political idea in this book.
That said, I think this book is a captivating meditation on otherness and be...more
That said, I think this book is a captivating meditation on otherness and be...more
Jeffrey
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
no one
Shelves:
spiritual-explorations
The Wicked Son by David Mamet, was recently described by Professor Don Siegel as “incendiary stuff” and “strong language designed to shock” and “neither politically correct nor designed to make Jewish readers feel good about themselves.” I agree with all these sentiments, as Professor Siegel loaned me the book to read after he finished with it, but I would go further. Mamet’s book, ostensibly an attack on Jew hating Jews, appears to me to be as anti-Semitic as anything that he criticizes.
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dense, at times impenetrable book about the curse of the modern liberal jew-very apropos at this point in time, with Israel on the ground in Gaza. He made me think twice about my usual wussy liberal response.
I almost gave it one star, but it makes too many fine and insightful points to warrant that low of a rating. The problem here is that David Mamet knows too many words and his insights become over-burdened by his vocabulary. Like Emerson before him, the unit of thought is the sentence - not the paragraph - and so the reader must pay extra-close attention. Where Mamet differs from Emerson, however, is that Emerson knew how to simplify a point, while Mamet seems only to know how to complicate thing...more
this book was unfathomably terrible, and it's written to an audience that I really don't think exists outside the author David Mamet's head.
seriously, it's not even a good example of reading an opposing argument because it's total GARBAGE
if you want to hate playwright/author/poet/egotist David Mamet too, save yourself the time of reading this book and watch any of his films. they are sure to fill you with slimy disgust
but I guess the above is open to debate if anyon...more
seriously, it's not even a good example of reading an opposing argument because it's total GARBAGE
if you want to hate playwright/author/poet/egotist David Mamet too, save yourself the time of reading this book and watch any of his films. they are sure to fill you with slimy disgust
but I guess the above is open to debate if anyon...more
I liked his questions. I did not always like his answers.
Both an analysis of self hate and a meditation on the joys of belonging, its short chapters are brief essays that could each stand alone and are easy to read while commuting or in a waiting room; it's debatable whether they cohere into a larger argument.
Mamet has a blind spot regarding Palestinian suffering; if the prime minister of Israel can acknowledge it on the floor of the Knesset why can't Mamet?
Mamet has a blind spot regarding Palestinian suffering; if the prime minister of Israel can acknowledge it on the floor of the Knesset why can't Mamet?
Nikki DeLeon
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
People Who Kind of Recognize the Guy Who Wrote Glengarry Glenn Ross, Disillusioned English Majors
The book primarily focuses on Jews who don't want to be Jews and why they are bad people, as well as why the world hates Israel and are thus bad people, but honestly, it's a pretty universal look at what it is and what it means to abandon your heritage and roots for something flimsier. Unless you are Honduran. In which case, live long and prosper, Geraldo Pablo Calabazas Jerry P. Clark.
I did not expect to agree with almost anything in this book. But I did, and that was unsettling and damn interesting. Mamet is way to the right of me, but I was moved by it anyway.
An academic take on the topic. A little hard to get through, but some very interesting and controversial points that can be thought-provoking.
Okay David Mamet, don't feel like you have to hold back your thoughts or anything
A total waste of time. Such a disappointment.. (proper view coming after my finals..)
Anything by Mamet is amazing, including his non-fiction.
interesting perspective...incredible vocabulary..carry a dictionary
1st edition, signed & inscribed by author
Santa Claus = child-sacrifice myth
another good polemic
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David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.
As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nomina...more
More about David Mamet...
As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nomina...more
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