So Long, Farewell

Hi, gang. Welcome back to Vox Tablet. I'm your host, Sarah Ivry. Today, so long, farewell,

auf wiedersehen, good night. No, we are not talking about my childhood crush on Georg

von Trapp. We're talking actually about the end of Vox Tablet. That's right. You heard

me. It's the end. This is the very last episode of our national magazine award-winning, music-loving,

soul-searching, tear-inducing, for me anyway, very often, knee-slapping, pioneering, dare

I say it, glass-ceiling-breaking, ladies, decade-long podcast. Producer Julie Subran

and I are bound for new adventures outside of Tablet. But before we go, we've got this

last one episode for you. It's a farewell episode. To bring it to you, Julie's going

to help me out today. She's joining me here in the studio. Julie Subran, hi. Welcome to

Vox Tablet. How are you doing?

Hi, Sarah. I'm good. A little sad.

A little sad, but good.

A little sad, indeed. Let's tell people what we've got on deck.

All right. So we combed through our archives, which at this point are more than 500 episodes,

I think. And we pulled excerpts from a handful of our very favorite episodes.

Which, I'm going to interrupt you to say, was not an easy task.

It's true.

Because over the years, we spoke to so many fascinating people, artists, writers, musicians,

photographers, people from the late David Rakoff, rest his soul, to Aileen Crum, to

Cokie Roberts, to Norman Lear, to...

That seltzer guy.

That seltzer guy who burped the whole time.

Oh, my God. He kept burping. He was hilarious. So many people. Too many to name. Too many

to thank. They were all amazing. And they were all so game to be interviewed by us,

by this fledgling podcast. Anyway, back to you.

Fledgling no more. So what you'll be hearing is a sampling of just some of the voices,

the words, and the stories that have stayed with us. We've got a conversation with a legendary

South African activist, a New Yorker cartoonist, an Israeli runkpuck.

An Israeli rock punk lesmer musician and more.

Also, throughout the episode, we've included music that we featured at one time or another

over the years. Julie and I are both huge music lovers, and we love talking to musicians.

You will find on our website a list of those selections. And you can also find links to

each of the episodes we feature here today. So go listen to them in full at your leisure.

All right, Sarah. So we're going to start off at the very top of one of, I think it's

safe to say, our most memorable interviews.

Are we testing everything all right?

Yeah. Can you tell me what you had for breakfast?

I certainly could. I had my juice. I had scrambled eggs, a bagel, a little cheese, and coffee.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Vox Tablet. I'm your host, Sarah Avery. Today,

we're hanging out with a veteran of the Yiddish stage.

Fiverr Finkel made his theatrical debut in the movie,

in New York City, nearly 80 years ago, when he was all of nine years old. By the time

he was 20, he was hamming it up in his first film, and he's been hamming it up ever since.

He's had...

Pardon me, my dear. I'm kosher. So don't say ham.

All right.

Do me a favor.

Okay. All right. Okay.

He was performing.

He was performing. All right.

Okay.

By the time he was 20, he was performing on film, and he's had recurring roles on popular

television shows like Boston Public and Picket Fences, for which he won an Oscar.

He won an Emmy, and on the big screen, most recently, in the Coen Brothers movie, A Serious

Man.

Right.

Finkel has just turned 88, and he's now appearing in a show called Fiverr Finkel Live. It's

a musical review presented by the Folk Spin Theater in New York City. He had his day off

today, and he graciously invited us over to his home in Midtown, New York, to talk about

his epic career. Fiverr Finkel, welcome to Vox Tablet.

I'm getting quite a kick out of it.

Yeah.

One of the earliest conversations we are still talking about is from back in 2000.

2006, and that was with David Berman.

If you don't know who he is, David Berman is a poet, he's a cartoonist, and he is the

frontman for the rock band Silver Jews.

I've been living in a K-hole

Ever since you went away

I've been down here day after day

We met up with him in a hotel room in Manhattan about, I think it was an hour before he was

set to do a sound check at a local club.

Do you remember his wife was in the bathroom, like, doing her makeup the whole time?

I do. She was really nice.

Yeah.

We were nervous about this interview, right, because David is notoriously press shy. That

said, we heard that he had gotten interested in his Jewish roots in recent years, and so

we were hoping that that would be our ticket to talking to him, that he'd open up a little

bit. One thing I remember in particular, I don't know if you remember, was how he kind

of contorted himself.

He was a very, very good singer. He was a very, very good singer. He was a very, very

good singer. He kind of contorted himself while he spoke. He sat on the edge of the

bed and kind of covered his head with his arms, and he crossed his legs like he was

bracing himself against everything from the outside.

Yep. I do remember that, and also the really halting way he talked. So you kept on thinking

that he was done, like he wasn't going to say any more, and he was going to kick us

out of the room, but he didn't stop. He kept talking, and it ended up just unraveling this

whole understanding of his own Judaism that was really deep. Let's listen.

When your band was formed in 1989, you were a member of the Jewish Community.

When your band was formed in 1989, you were a member of the Jewish Community. You guys

called yourselves the Silver Jews.

Yeah.

How did you come to that name?

It's very strange to me because I think I'm very good, if I'm good at anything, at titles

and naming things, or at least I'll say this, that that was something I was good at before

I was good at writing. And so I always, you know, I remember that we were putting out

our first seven-inch, and I was a guard at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and I

had drawn a scene from one of the windows where a sign is cut off, and the first part

of the sign is Silver Jew, and so I had drawn a drawing, and for whatever reason, that became

a candidate for the band name. And the other one was The Walnut Falcons, which was the

title of one of the songs on the record we were putting out. And it came down to this

one girl who worked behind the book table at the Whitney, and she told me she thought

Silver Jews was the right name. And over the years, I started to feel like, you know, I'm

wrong. It was a burdensome name, and I always wondered, you know, why did I make a mistake

in that one category where, in such an important category? And the best thing that's ever maybe

happened to me, as far as my art merging with my life, has been the fact of me growing into

that name in the last two years, and being, feeling incredibly blessed.

I was so blessed that somehow I picked such an awkward name, and that I kept it.

Well, what sort of, since we're talking about religion, what begat this sort of closeness

to religion that you've come to have?

Well, I've always wanted to be religious. I was always scared when I was younger that,

you know, because I was around, a lot around born-again Christians, and I would quiz them

constantly about what happened, you know, what went on, you know, when.

You say that Christ came into your heart, and you saw everything differently.

And, but I was afraid of that happening, like, so I'm like, I think about being, I want to be

religious, and sometimes I would be like, don't come into my art, Christ. You know, I was like,

I thought it would be something that could, because if people would describe it like it

was something, like, that happened without them thinking. As I grew older, sometimes,

I went through periods where I would try to pray for months at a time, and I didn't ever have

very much success, you know, in thinking of religion as, you know, consciousness of God's

presence. I could get consciousness of God's presence for, you know, a few minutes here and

there, but I certainly did not have what I would call a relationship with God. And in my 30s,

you know, my lifestyle became less about educating myself, and more about just being high as much as

I could be. And, you know, obviously, I'd given up the project of closeness to God,

somewhere along that way, but in my most desperate moments, I would pray with all the incredible shame,

that anyone who's ever been in a desperate moment, who never prays otherwise, prays.

And, well, a lot of time went by, and things got worse, and things got worse, and

eventually, I wound up in rehab, and when I got home, through a combination of talking to my shrink,

and developing a relationship with this rabbi, I just started reading to try to,

to become a Jew, all the way through the mikvah bath, and I read every day, I read the Torah every

day, putting myself under a lot more study of any one subject that I ever have in my life, and

it's the only thing I want to read, and it's ultimately satisfying on a day-to-day basis.

So you sort of came out of a secular Jewish tradition, so I'm wondering the context of your

Jewish awakening, or religious awakening, I mean, did you have,

did you have any Hebrew school experience as a kid, or?

No, my father, as a businessman, as a baby boomer, for whatever reasons, I don't know,

decided he was going to live a life that's completely incompatible with Jewish ideals,

so, I mean, I didn't know that, I just thought my father wasn't interested in the traditions of his

ancestors.

When I think about it now, and I can see how long of a line of people have passed down this book,

and how unlikely that chain, the length of the chain, and my shock upon realizing the audacity

that my father had to break that chain without,

any thought to the hundreds of grandfathers above him,

and the people below him, because even if you don't like it, even if you just don't like Judaism,

if you have any sense of history, if you've ever played a game of tennis where you wanted to hit

the ball back and forth and count how many times before you broke the chain, then you have to

respect that.

Okay,

listen to something a little bit lighter, not everything was super deep, here is a woman on the street,

man on the street piece we recorded way back when, on a beautiful summer day in lower Manhattan,

we went down to where people stand in line to take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty,

and we wanted to find out specifically if those people waiting in line knew anything about the poem

that is engraved on the bottom of that statue.

Have you ever heard this poem, some of the words go, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,

yearning to breathe,

free?

No.

No?

Oh, you know, yeah, a long time ago, yeah.

It's famous, yes, it's very famous.

Is that part of the Constitution, is it, the American Constitution?

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.

Does that ring any bells?

That rings bells.

What kind of bells?

That is the, I forgot where it's originally from, but it's talking about what the Statue of Liberty is supposed to represent

in terms of people who might come to this country to make a better life for themselves.

What about the name Emma Lazarus?

Have you ever heard of her?

Emma Lazarus.

No.

No?

No.

She's the woman who wrote the poem.

Ah.

Women never get enough credit.

That's true.

So if I say to you, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, what do you say?

The wretched refuse of your teeming shores, send these tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamb, um, I just lost the last three words.

Beside the golden door.

Emma Lazarus.

Bravo.

So what do you know about her?

She was Jewish.

Yes.

Not much after that, really.

So here's the 411 on this poem.

It's a sonnet.

It's called The New Colossus.

And it was written by Emma Lazarus for a statue fundraiser in 1883.

Emma Lazarus was a Sephardic Jew who grew up in Rhode Island in New York City.

She came from a well-to-do family and she published her first book of poems at the young age of 60.

Besides being a prolific poet, she was also a critic, a translator, a playwright, a Zionist, a feminist, and a friend to the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James.

Emma Lazarus died pretty young, in 1887, at the age of 38.

Let's hear her poem in its entirety.

Okay, this is The New Colossus.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from Lantos.

Here at sea-washed sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch whose flame is the imprisoned lightning

And her name, Mother of Exiles, from her beacon hand

From her beacon hand glows worldwide welcome

Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame

Keep ancient lands your storied pomp, cries she with silent lips

Give me your tired, your poor, your poor

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Yearning to breath free

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me

I lift my lamp beside the golden door

Emma Lazarus, 1883

The New Colossus, written by Emma Lazarus, read for us today by a group of enthusiastic

people queuing up to visit the Statue of Liberty in Lower Manhattan.

The New Colossus, written by Emma Lazarus, read for us today by a group of enthusiastic people queuing up to visit the Statue of Liberty in Lower Manhattan.

Shajar al-mustanah

Dallal ala a'idanu

Na'ana al-jinayna

Masghi fi hizanu

Shajar al-mustanah

Dallal ala a'idanu

Galat al-sudayya

So over these years, we've been able to work with a lot of really talented, far-flung correspondents

who could bring us stories that we wouldn't otherwise have access to.

And one of those people is Hugh Levinson.

Hugh's a London-based reporter, and he's recorded lots and lots of great interviews for us.

Here is an excerpt from one of them.

It's an interview with Albie Sachs, a South African activist who fought apartheid

and later became a judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Let's delve a little bit into the past.

And into your past.

Tell me a little bit about your heritage and the family you came from.

My dad was a very well-known figure, Solly Sachs.

You might guess from the name that he was a Jew. I'm a Jew.

My mother, Rae Ginsberg.

Both of them came from families fleeing from persecution, from pogroms in Lithuania.

He was very active in the trade union movement.

He became General Secretary of the Garment Workers Union.

And when apartheid really hit this country hard, he was one of the principal targets.

So did this history of persecution, like most of the Jewish community here,

being Lithuanian and escaping the pogroms, how did that influence you?

I think it comes in with your mother's milk sort of thing.

It's a certain almost abstract idealism, a feeling for justice,

maybe handed down over generations to a community that's known marginalization,

persecution.

You became a civil rights lawyer.

You were locked up.

You were exiled to Mozambique and that there was an assassination attempt against you.

Can you tell me a little bit about that and also how that changed your life?

I went into exile in 1966.

I went to the United Kingdom, in fact, and went to Mozambique in 1977.

And in 1988, I was blown up by a bomb put in my car by South African security agents.

Well, it changed my life.

It might sound weird to say so, being blown up and losing an arm inside of an eye.

It changed my life for the better.

I was reborn, not in that charismatic, emotional, finding the Lord sense,

but as a human being.

I think it says, naked you come into the world.

Naked, I almost went out.

I was going to the beach and had very skimpy clothing on.

And naked under a sheet.

In a hospital room, I re-emerged and I could just do everything from the beginning.

And it was actually a wonderful journey of recovery and recuperation with lots and lots of love.

And it meant when I returned to South Africa, I was returning in joy.

So I'm totally used to life without a right arm.

I once wrote that if I were offered my arm back again, I think I would refuse.

It's just saying emotionally, I can't imagine myself back into who I was before.

And you actually encountered the man who ordered the planting of the bomb, I understand.

Yes, I did.

His name was Henry and he telephoned me to say that he was going to the Truth Commission.

Would I meet him?

Which was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up after the end of apartheid.

Yes, under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

And it enabled people who'd been guilty of atrocious crimes, on whatever side they were,

to come forward.

To come forward, to tell the truth, and then to be indemnified against prosecution or civil damages.

And I met him.

He came to my chambers.

And I still remember when I opened the door and there he was.

So this is the man who tried to kill me.

And we spoke and spoke and spoke and spoke.

And eventually I said, Henry, normally when I say goodbye to someone, I shake their hand.

I can't shake your hand.

But tell the truth.

Help South Africa.

Do something for the new country.

That's emerging.

And who knows, we'll meet one day and who knows.

And almost a year passed and I was at a party, end of the year, and I heard a voice saying, Albie.

And I looked around.

My God, it's Henry.

And he was absolutely elated.

And he came up to me and he said, hello, hello, hello, hello, Albie.

I spoke to Bobby and Sue and Farouk.

He's using first name terms of people who'd been in exile with me, who also could have been targets of the bomb.

And I told them everything I knew.

I knew.

And you said that maybe one day.

And I said, Henry, only your face says that what you're telling me is the truth.

And I put out my hand and shook his hand.

He went away absolutely elated.

I almost fainted.

But I heard afterwards he went home and he cried for two weeks afterwards.

We humanize ourselves in this way.

And that whole process is what I call part of my soft vengeance.

Hard vengeance is doing to them what they've done to you.

And imagine a country full of people without their arms.

It would be brutal and terrible.

So you have to find ways as a nation of breaking the cycle.

Music.

greatsir. He went to Greensville, Mississippi to record the annual deli luncheon, which is

a tradition that's endured there for more than 130 years among the shrinking Jewish

population who lives there. And we're going to pick up in the middle.

My name is Esther Scheinberg Solomon. This started in the 1800s in my husband's great

grandmother's backyard. And her name was Emmeline Weiss-Golstein. Her parents had

one of the first stores in Greensville, Mississippi.

Pray or what?

Pray or whatever you need.

For a long time it was called the Dortch Dinner because so many of the members were of German

descent. And they served beef brisket, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, mashed by hand. And then

after World War I, that wasn't so popular to be saying something with a German connotation,

saying,

So at that point they changed it and called it just the Dutch Dinner then. And then about

maybe 25 years ago, we evolved into the Corned Beef Deli.

My name is Leanne Silverblot. I'm the fourth generation in my family to live here in Indianola.

And my great-grandparents moved here from a little bitty town in the Delta called Silver

City.

There was a lady in our congregation, very colorful character. Her name was Betty Goldstein.

She was doing the sauerkraut.

At that point, everyone smoked.

She would stand over the stove with a cigarette in her mouth and the ash would get longer

and longer on the end of the cigarette and we would all just hold our breaths that the

ashes wouldn't fall in the pot. It never did. We didn't know if it did. And I remember

watching her and thinking to myself, nobody's helping her. How are we going to know how

to do this when she quits doing it? And lo and behold, when she quit doing it, it became

all of a sudden I was doing it.

I'd remember what she did and I'd ask her a few questions and then I changed it just

a little bit.

Ernest Dotson, he's been helping probably for 40 years and he always would help her

do the sauerkraut. And you could hear her screaming his name all over the temple.

Ernest! Ernest! Ernest! He couldn't, I mean, she would just scream for him and he would

help her. And so he helps me do the sauerkraut now. And he told me, he said, we tasted it

the other day and he said, you know, Miss Leanne, your sauerkraut's pretty good, but

it's not good.

It's not as good as Miss Goldstein's. And I said, I know that, Ernest. And I said, you

know, probably because ours doesn't have the ashes in it to season it up the way ours did.

I'm just thankful that I kind of watched her do it so I know a little bit about what to

do. But now nobody's watching me, so I don't know who's going to do it when I can't do

it anymore.

When Next Book, the predecessor to Tablet, first launched this podcast, I think we knew

more about what we didn't want it to be than what we wanted it to be. We didn't want it

to be predictable. Yeah, no way. We definitely did not want it to be schmaltzy. And we wanted

to avoid, as best we could, the three go-to topics that always crop up when it comes to

reporting about Jewish culture. I speak, of course, of Israel, the Holocaust, and Klezmer.

Since then, I have to say, we've revisited our opposition. We've discovered that we can,

in fact, cover all three of those topics in ways that are fresh and are our own.

Okay, here's an example. This is an excerpt from an interview we did with Noam Inbar during

a trip we took to Israel back in 2008. At that time, Noam was the front man for not

one but two bands. One was called Habiluim, which they described as a theatrical rock

and polka band. It had also traces of punk rock and hillbilly. And then they had another

band.

Do you mean rockabilly?

Maybe.

I think so.

Okay.

His other band, which was called Oidivision, played Klezmer.

Klezmer. Noam is super smart, and he's very moving when he talks about the Israeli context

for the music that he makes. So we're going to pick up that conversation with some music

from the first Oidivision album.

I want to talk a little bit about Habiluim, which you mentioned. It's often described as an

experimental punk band. I've seen that description. Habiluim put out its second record this past

fall, right? 2007. And that album is called Failure and Bereavement, which is a literary

reference. Is that correct?

It is, yeah.

To what? Can you tell us?

To a book by Yosef Chaim Brenner, who's a pioneer writer. He's

the same generation as Agnon and Bialik. And all the songs in the record are, in a way,

connected to ideas or situations that Brenner spoke about. In the 20s, in the 10s, I mean,

he already saw the moral problems arising from Zionism. And he's the only one who would

rise and say, there is a basic moral problem incorporated in the idea of Zionism and the

immigration to Israel of Jews. He sees the relationship with the local people, with Arabs,

with Palestinians, a very important factor. And he would look at these problems and

rise them up in his book. And also, he has this idea that you should,

always check yourself before you blame the other side. And he speaks about that and

about personal failure and national failure and all kinds of dark feelings and intuitions.

And this album is a 2007 version of this.

Let's talk about that song .... Can you tell us a little about it?

What is it about?

It's, in a way, it's about the Nakba, the 48th war.

It's a lullaby song.

Yeah, it's very melodic.

I mean, it's beautiful to listen to.

If you don't know the lyrics, you'd think it was just a love song.

No, it's not.

It's not.

It's a very bloody song.

The basic situation is of a father trying to explain to his son

his action in the 48th war.

And he says, you know,

we just wanted to sit around the bonfire and sing

Sovevlo Sovev Finjan.

I don't know how to translate it.

It's a very famous song.

It's an Israeli folk song about the fact that they drink coffee

around the bonfire, how do you say?

Yeah, around the bonfire.

The bonfire.

And then he becomes more and more explicit.

He tells about, in a little bit of a strange way,

a strange and surrealistic way,

he tells about a specific event that we took from the newspapers

about one of the battalions, it wasn't even a battalion,

maybe a squad, I don't know, six or seven soldiers,

took a Bedouin girl, they raped her for a few days continuously,

and then they killed her and buried her in the sands.

So.

So this is a war crime that happens in wars,

but it's important to remember this when we speak about the 48th war.

It's true, child, it's true, that I held her from behind.

It was for security reasons that we passed her in the right way.

It's true, child, it's true,

we held her in the right way.

It was for security reasons that we passed her in the right way.

We gave her to the tree that will multiply,

in the time it looks like a solution.

Take note of that, we tried very much,

because we burned all the ruins,

we parted the streets,

we tried very much,

we wore our names,

It's interesting for me

to try to take the experience

of participating in a rock concert

or in a folk concert

and being able to feel

these intense

and contradictional feelings

about your own culture,

about your history,

about morality,

about big questions

of identity.

Yeah.

But interestingly,

you said in Haaretz,

the newspaper Haaretz,

that bereavement and failure

is an adoration

of Israeli culture.

Yes.

So,

that seems like

an incongruous description.

It is,

because it's,

I mean,

when you criticize something

truly,

I mean,

from your heart,

it's something

that you belong to

and you love.

And this bereavement

and failure

is a very postmodern album

in a way,

the fact that

almost in every song

you have a quote,

either musical

or textual quote

from a song

from Israeli folklore.

And it's very much rooted

in Israeli culture.

And it's very much rooted

in Israeli culture.

Continue to enjoy a week.

Thank you.

Bye.

We started this podcast more than 10 years ago.

And in that time, a lot has happened.

Julie, you had a kid, a beautiful daughter.

I had a kid, a rascal of a son.

We got a little bit older.

I certainly got a lot grayer.

Me too.

We hopefully got a tiny bit wiser, both to the ins and outs of podcasts and the ways of the world.

And a lot of that knowledge came from the wise and wonderful people we were lucky to speak with.

Yep.

One of my favorite wise and wonderful people is Roz Chast, who we got to talk to about her incredible graphic memoir.

If you haven't read it, you absolutely should.

It's called Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

And it's about caring for her very old...

...old parents in their last years.

This was one of the very few occasions when I was actually in the driver's seat.

And it definitely made me appreciate just how hard your job is, Sarah.

I just want to say the reason you were in the driver's seat was because of the phenomenon of aging, which was my grandmother was, I think, actually a death store at that time.

And I had to go visit her.

Anyway, let's listen to a little bit of Roz.

Did making this book or going through this experience change how you think about yourself?

Your own aging or dying or...

I certainly think about it more.

I think that is one thing.

When your parents are gone, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize where you are on that ladder.

You know, it's like suddenly there's nobody there ahead of you and you're next.

And it did make me think about extreme old age.

And how much I don't want to be there.

But on the other hand, how do I know now from the perspective where I'm sitting what it feels like to be where my mother was at?

I mean, she always said, I don't want to be a pulsating in her inimitable, most Elizabeth Chast assistant principal voice.

I don't want to be a pulsating.

I don't want to be a pulsating piece of protoplasm.

And yet she became a pulsating piece of protoplasm at the end, you know, at this phenomenal cost.

And that was another thing that was just so shocking, which I know we don't talk about because it's so gross.

But the expense of it is just horrifying.

Also kind of funny when you think about it.

I mean, there is a sort of like humorous aspect in a kind of sick black comedy sort.

Can you draw that out for me?

Well, I think about my parents.

I think about the patched oven mitts.

I think about how they really knew the value of a dollar.

They worked very hard for it.

And then at the end, they're in a place where for my mother, the last few months, and it was their money.

You know, it was so it was and I'm glad they had it.

And they were getting good care.

But it was like $14,000.

$14,000 a month.

You know, it was bats.

And this was not intensive care.

This was not, you know, having a private nurse or anything like that.

It was just my mother lying in bed, drinking Ensure, being in a Depends, pooping out the Ensure, getting cleaned, and then doing this again.

It was insane.

But how do I know what it will feel like to be?

I'm 97 and not wanting to die.

And maybe you don't.

Maybe you just say, this is okay.

Did you arrive at some sort of Zen understanding about these things?

No, not at all.

Not at all.

I would say the most Zen thing that happened, I don't know if that's the right word, probably not, was when my father died.

It was pretty instantaneous, all of the ways that he had driven me bananas that they just evaporated.

And it was really surprising to me because I didn't have any idea of what I would feel like after he died.

And he was the first of my parents to die.

I didn't know whether I would be sad.

I didn't know whether I'd be relieved.

I didn't know what I would feel.

And the main feeling I had...

Was how much I loved him.

And how grateful I was.

And it really took me by surprise.

So that was a sort of Zen-ish thing.

Different with my mother.

So, no, I don't have any more understanding of any of this.

I mean, it still seems...

The whole thing seems...

Totally bizarre.

And rigged.

And horrible to me.

On almost every level.

There's like nothing good about it.

But it's inevitable.

And there are some funny things.

Or I've found some funny things in it along the way.

Roz Chast, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Well, thank you.

Julie, I think it might be time to say goodbye.

Well, not quite yet.

Wait, wait, wait.

We started with that hilarious...

Interrupted host intro that you did with Five-ish Finkel.

And I think it's only proper that we go out with a classic Sarah host sign-off.

This is from a conversation that you had with super smart theater critic and historian Elisa Solomon

about the Broadway musical West Side Story.

Elisa Solomon, thanks so much for speaking with us.

My pleasure.

Are we going to sing now?

Can we?

What shall we sing?

A boy like that.

Who killed your brother?

Forget that boy and find another.

One of your own kind.

Stick to your own kind.

A boy like that will bring you sorrow.

You'll meet another boy tomorrow.

One of your own kind.

Stick to your own kind.

We have so many people we need to thank and we want to thank for their help over these many years.

We have to start with Curtis Fox and Blake Eskin,

who were the ones who created this podcast.

Of course, we also want to give a big shout-out of thanks to Julie Sandorf,

who supported it from day one.

Also to Joanna Rakoff, to Alana Newhouse and Morty Landown, who kept us going.

Big, big thank you and much love to all our pals at Tablet Magazine

who've listened and tweeted and Facebooked and all of that good stuff

that shows that you care about what we're doing.

And we want to say thank you to the crew of wonderful producer friends

who've contributed over the years to Hugh Levinson, to Eric Malinsky,

to Marit Hart.

Also Daniel Estrin, Emily Botin, Pike Malinowski.

And a big thank you to the gang at Israel Story

and to PRX and Caitlin Thompson at ACAST.

Thank you to Charles Montebello at CDM Studios,

to Andy Bachman, who was a returning guest and a kind of spiritual helper to us.

Huge, huge thanks to Paul Ruast at Argo Studios

for recording this show week after week after week after week.

I am so certain that Paul now knows way, way more about Jewish culture,

history, and ideas than he ever imagined he would.

Paul's not here this week, but we are happy to have Noriko Okabe here.

She works at Argo Studios, too, and she was very kind to furnish us

with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon today, which definitely made this a little easier.

Yeah.

Last but not least, a big thank you to you, dear listeners out there in listener land.

Do not be strangers.

You can email us at podcast at tabletmag.com, but better yet, follow us on Twitter.

Julie, what's your handle?

It's Julie underscore C.

Julie underscore C.

And remember to at that first.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

At that.

At that, girl.

And I'm at Sarah Ivry, S-A-R-A-I-V-R-Y.

I also have a tiny letter, so if you want to find out where we're going to be in three

weeks or three months, follow us on Twitter, and maybe there'll be some exciting news.

That's it.

Signing off this last time for Vox Tablet.

It's been a lot of fun.

I've really enjoyed it.

I've enjoyed working with you, Julie.

Likewise, Sarah.

I'm Sarah Ivry, and you're Julie Subran.

Bye.