memoir

This Viennese Writer Ran from Nazis to the Brazilian Jungle

The Viennese Jewish writer Stefan Zweig wrote about what you might expect a friend of Freud, Herzl, and Richard Strauss to write about: psychoanalysis, Judaism, rage, guilt, and sex. Zweig, who was born into an assimilated, wealthy Jewish family in 1881, began writing in his youth, and never stopped. In 1934, following Hitler’s rise to power, […]

By Zachary Solomon

from Jewniverse

A 16th-Century Spanish Jew Wrote This Memoir. Then He Was Burned at the Stake.

It hasn’t won any literary prizes or received an Oprah endorsement. But a brief autobiographical account by 16th-century Spanish-born Luis de Carvajal the Younger, bound together with other documents written in his hand, is the earliest known Jewish text in the New World. And for the first time—as part of a fascinating new exhibition on […]

from Jewniverse

Growing Up Gay in a Brooklyn Bra Shop

Growing up in 1960s Brooklyn, Steven didn’t have many friends his age. Arnie and Irv who worked at the diner called him a fairy. Lily Williams the saleslady said he “would come to no good.” His own father seemed perennially disappointed in him. But 15-year-old Steven had a plan to make them sorry: He was […]

from Jewniverse