Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter


Jorge Luis Borges

Yes­ter­day Zeek at Jew­cy post­ed the final sec­tion of Ilan Sta­vans’ mono­graph on Borges and the Jews:

In this, the final sec­tion of Ilan Sta­vans’ mono­graph on Borges and the Jews, Sta­vans reflects on his own rela­tion­ship with Borges, as one writer to anoth­er. This piece thus cir­cles back to the begin­ning of the mono­graph, Part I of this series, in which Sta­vans explored Borges’ self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a writer and, odd­ly, as a Jew. Part II focused on Borges’ infat­u­a­tion with Kab­bal­ah. In Part III, Sta­vans argued that Borges care­ful­ly styled him­self as a lit­er­ary son of Jew­ish pre­cur­sors. Sta­vans took on the so-called apo­lit­i­cal” Borges in Part IV, demon­strat­ing that he was deeply engaged in fight­ing Nazism, and that this engage­ment devel­oped Borges’ belief in a uni­ver­sal man” – the idea that all of us are wan­der­ing Jews.” Now, the Mex­i­can-Jew­ish Sta­vans turns back to the Argen­tin­ian Borges for one last look.

To read the fifth and final sec­tion of the mono­graph (and also access the oth­er four parts), click here.

Image via

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor and now CEO, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.