Sanders Isaac Bernstein
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return2sanders.bsky.social
Sanders Isaac Bernstein
@return2sanders.bsky.social
reader, writer, theatergoer. PhD into memory. Writing in The Baffler, Jewish Currents, Ploughshares, Hypocrite Reader, Full Stop, Majuscule, The London Magazine, newyorker.... Stage Editor for @exberlinermag.

https://sandersbernstein.wordpress.com
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I first saw The Klezmer Project, a beautiful film that plays with fiction, history, text & image, urging us to consider culture beyond blood and nation, at Berlinale 2023. @jewishcurrents.bsky.social let me write about it. Thank you, Nathan & Nora, for supporting and editing this labor of years.
The film The Klezmer Project, writes Sanders Isaac Bernstein, suggests a new ethic of diasporism—rejecting both the violence of Zionism and the sentimental dream of recovering a Yiddish past.

Now online from our Fall/Winter 2024 issue:
Sonic Bloom
The film The Klezmer Project suggests a new ethic of diasporism—rejecting both the violence of Zionism and the sentimental dream of recovering a Yiddish…
jewishcurrents.org
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Heute um 14 Uhr !
October 10, 2025 at 8:27 AM
October 5, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
A few thoughts about the NYT critics shakeup: Theater is one of the hardest of all disciplines to cover as a critic (or reporter). You need to know its language and history. And there's a ton you can and should do to educate yourself. But you can never "catch up." You can't see what you didn't see.>
July 16, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
On Florentina Holzinger’s latest opera, by @return2sanders.bsky.social
July 9, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
My debut novel, Poor Ghost! is out today with @sceptrebooks.bsky.social

It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff.

I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
May 22, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Dass der Zentralrat besorgt ist vom Beschluss der @die-linke.de, die IHRA-Arbeitsdefinition abzulehnen und die Jerusalem Declaration (JDA) anzunehmen, kann man ihm glauben. Aber seine Argumentation gegen die JDA ist so nicht haltbar. Vier Punkte. 1/ x.com/ZentralratJu...
May 17, 2025 at 5:49 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
„Dass die IHRA-Definition von Regierungen angenommen wurde, ist weitgehend Ergebnis politischer Kampagnen von Akteuren im Einklang mit der israelischen Regierung. Es gibt ausreichend Belege, dass die IHRA v. illiberalen Kräften instrumentalisiert wird, um Freiheiten & Menschenrechte zu untergraben.“
May 17, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
An interesting layered take on Joe Chialo and the dismantling of funding for progressive arts projects in Berlin, plus whether mockery helps.
thediasporist.de/bait-and-swi...
Bait and Switch – the Diasporist
So what about Chialo’s legacy? No reasonable person could say that his work has consolidated the strength of culture or fostered “social cohesion.” To the contrary, animosity and mistrust now reign be...
thediasporist.de
May 12, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Now get rid of the AfD policies and attitudes that the CDU/CSU has adopted.
May 3, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
The wonderful people of @almafamily4.bsky.social still need your help!!! Give if you can!!!
Donate to Help me and my family Rebuild their lives, organized by Alma Family
I am alma from Gaza and I am 14 years old.   My family consists of 10 member… Alma Family needs your support for Help me and my family Rebuild their lives
gofundme.com
May 3, 2025 at 12:43 PM
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FULL LINEUP for our little festival of Australian and Aoteoroa/New Zealand literature in Berlin on May 24th!! Come see professors, poets, artists, & novelists (& me); come hear about Weiss & Bismarck's bastards & Sebald in the desert & multidirectional war memory >>

stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...
PARATAXE Symposium XVI = Antipodes: Down under in Berlin – the Australian & New Zealand authors of Berlin
Draft program: 13:30: Kick-offWith Alexander Wells and Martin Jankowski 14:00 – 15:30: Panel 1 (in German)NEIGHBOURS. Encounters, translations, suggestions.Keynote: Prof. Anja SchwarzPanel: Joel Scott...
stadtsprachen.de
April 30, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
great column on thomas brasch and berlin's political theater by @return2sanders.bsky.social in last month's Berliner mag >>
www.the-berliner.com/stage/thomas...
Brasch Words: Remembering a Berlin theatre that spoke truth to power - The Berliner
In the year that would have marked Thomas Brasch's 80th birthday, two new plays that interpolate his work pose questions about the transgressive playwright's legacy.
www.the-berliner.com
April 22, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
in this month's Berliner mag, I waded in to the "brodernism" debate—and called time on the genre of anglophone literary criticism that was designed to go viral on Twitter >>

www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...
In search of “Brodernism”: Where is this maximalist cult of difficulty? - The Berliner
It's possible to read literature in translation and not fetishise it – we do it all the time.
www.the-berliner.com
April 11, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
More than 40 years after the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the full scope of the toll AIDS took on the world of theater in New York remains difficult to access.
The List Keepers
More than 40 years after the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the full scope of the toll AIDS took on the world of theater in New York remains difficult to access.
www.vulture.com
April 9, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Was für ein Grauen: Der Berliner Kulturzerstörer Joe Chialo soll lt. tagesschau offenbar Kultur-Staatsminister werden.
April 9, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
🪓 Outrage in the Czech Republic: Axe used to vandalize memorial to Romani children murdered during the Holocaust

📰 Full article: romea.cz/en/czech-rep...
Liberec, Czech Republic: Axe used to damage memorial to Romani children who died during the Holocaust - Romea.cz - Everything about Roma in one place
An unidentified perpetrator has damaged a memorial commemorating children of Romani origin who were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. The bronze plaque of the Liberec memorial has bee...
romea.cz
April 6, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Rest in power, John Fox. Welfare State was a guiding light to a generation of theatre and performance-makers. 🏮
John Fox obituary
Co-founder of the Welfare State, a street theatre company that later moved on to community-related work
www.theguardian.com
April 9, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Amen
According to C. Smith's 2022 article in The Atlantic, Germany has learned from its past. 👀 That piece is still in my craw.

If you can't see how their current actions are related to their past (the Holocaust, WW2, colonialism, slavery, etc.), then I can't help you.
April 3, 2025 at 2:01 PM
With the money from the sponsorship, I hear the stabi’s going to have some decent food at last… www.the-berliner.com/english-news...
OpenAI Akademie: Berlin library assumes controversial new name - The Berliner
Berlin's Stabi gets a new name: OpenAI to sponsor the Berlin library, now the "OpenAI Akademie" offering AI-generated book summaries.
www.the-berliner.com
April 1, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Viktor Orbán's Hungary: scourge of the EU, role model for the US right. For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about how the Orbán regime seeks legitimacy by telling dodgy stories about the 20th century—stories not all so different from those that we've been telling in the West

thebaffler.com/salvos/house...
House of the Rising Hun | Alexander Wells
In Budapest, the House of Terror museum is a physical embodiment of Viktor Orbán’s ambition to rewrite Hungary’s national myths along authoritarian lines.
thebaffler.com
March 25, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Viktor Orbán wants to rewrite Hungary’s national myths. In this preview from our new issue (out next week) @ajbwells.bsky.social writes on the many fronts of the Fidesz party’s culture war.
Manipulations of Historical Memory in Orbán’s Hungary
In Budapest, the House of Terror museum is a physical embodiment of Viktor Orbán’s ambition to rewrite Hungary’s national myths along authoritarian lines.
thebaffler.com
March 25, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Fidesz wants to "substitute gulag for Auschwitz, to make ideas like redistribution and internationalism just as politically taboo as antisemitism and eugenics"

Such a great essay about Hungary's anti-communist memory culture by @ajbwells.bsky.social in @thebaffler.com
House of the Rising Hun | Alexander Wells
In Budapest, the House of Terror museum is a physical embodiment of Viktor Orbán’s ambition to rewrite Hungary’s national myths along authoritarian lines.
thebaffler.com
March 25, 2025 at 1:24 PM