Classic Jam Hits

#209 – Being a Jew in 1900, Being a Jew Now – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 12/15/25: Tonight, I read from Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. In light of the events in Australia yesterday, I take the time not just to talk about what it meant to be a Jewish immigrant to America around the year 1900, but what it means to me to be a Jew right now.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

1. #209 – Being a Jew in 1900, Being a Jew Now 28:37
2. #208: Bach & God 23:27
3. #207 – Death, the Gods, and Endless Life in Ancient Egypt 29:38
4. #206 – The Discovery of Indo-European Languages – 1876 30:11
5. #205: Learning to Read, c. 2000 BCE 27:57
6. #204: Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," 1856 25:48
7. #203: Bruce Springsteen Talks About "Nebraska" – 1984 18:34
8. #202 – A Death at Sea, 1834 16:00
9. #201 – Gillian Anderson, & What Women Want, 2024 18:15
10. #200: The Last Days of Walter Benjamin, 1940 26:12

Going through my computer the other day, I found the .pdfs of these classic book sets, and thought to post them here for whoever wants them: Frazer’s The Golden Bough, The Mythology of All Races, and Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. [An update in 2021, I’ve now added a translation of the eleventh-century Irish Lebor Gabála Érenn] Whatever their limitations now, they are still great resources. I can’t remember where I found them, but it’s probably still difficult to cobble all of these sets together on one page. So I can at least offer that: 

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Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, edited by James B. Pritchard: Volume 1 | Volume 2

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The Golden Bough, by James. G. Frazer:

The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (Part 1)
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (Part 2)
Taboo and the Perils of the Soul
The Dying God
Adonis, Attis, Osiris (Part 1)
Adonis, Attis, Osiris (Part 2)
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (Part 1)
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (Part 2)
The Scapegoat
Balder the Beautiful (Part 1)
Balder the Beautiful (Part 2)
Bibliography and General Index
Aftermath & Supplement

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The Mythology of All Races, edited by George Herbert Reed

Greek & Roman, by William Sherwood Fox
Eddic, by John Arnott MacCulloch
Celtic and Slavic, by John Arnott MacCulloch and Jan Máchal
Finno-Ugric and Siberian, by Uno Holmberg
Semitic, by Stephen Herbert Langdon
Indian and Iranian, by Arthur Berriedale Keith and Albert Joseph Carnoy
Armenian and African, by Mardiros Harootioon Ananikian and Alice Werner
Chinese and Japanese, by John Calvin Ferguson and Masaharu Anesaki
Oceanic, by Roland Burrage Dixon
North American, by Hartley Burr Alexander
Latin American, by Hartley Burr Alexander
Egyptian and Indo-Chinese, by Wilhelm Max Müller and James George Scott
Complete Index

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R. A. S. Macalister’s five-volume translation of the c.11th century Irish Lebor Gabála Érenn, published between 1938 and 1956, can be downloaded here. Read about the Lebor Gabála Érenn, or visit the website of its publisher, the Irish Texts Society.

Lebor Gabála Érenn, volume 1
Lebor Gabála Érenn, volume 2
Lebor Gabála Érenn, volume 3
Lebor Gabála Érenn, volume 4
Lebor Gabála Érenn, volume 5