Whenever I’d ask my relatives where my great-grandparents had lived before immigrating to the United States, their answers always seemed strangely, frustratingly unspecific: A little village near Minsk, or maybe Pinsk, they would say. In the part of Russia that is now called Belarus, they thought. It may have been near a river, they conjectured.Read More

Two

After the taxi driver had been promised $25 plus a five dollar tip he became silent. The two passengers were silent, too.David Melnitz crammed his frail shape into a corner of the cab. He was dozing lightly, but every once in a while he opened one eye and looked through the window. The summer night had a blackness which nothing couldRead More

The Making Of Martyrs

By Lisa Keys

One day last spring was much like any other for Mohanned Abu Tayyun. He awoke early at his Nablus home, got dressed, washed his face and had his usual breakfast. Similarly, throughout Israel, most local families were occupied with workaday morning rituals: drinking coffee, reading the paper, doling goodbye pecks to loved ones.And yetRead More

Love for the Fatherland, Tragically Unrequited

By Gal Beckerman

Impossible Love: Ascher Levy’s Longing for Germany By Roman Frister Phoenix Press, 359 pages, $15.95. * * *My grandfather, a native of Dresden, adored Strauss waltzes, bratwurst and the opera “Die Fledermaus.” After the war, though he refused to buy a BMW, he always spoke with admiration of and largely embodied that distinctRead More

Back to Bauhaus

By Bill Strubbe

To many tourists, Tel Aviv is merely an obligatory pit stop with an airport and a sunny beach, so they quickly move on to venerable Jerusalem for a dose of sightseeing and history. Having sprung up on the sand dunes mere decades ago, little in the newborn metropolis was considered worth preserving.But now that the United Nations Educational,Read More

Serpents, Seraphs and Memory

By Aryeh Lev Stollman

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a seraph and mount it on a standard…” [and so] Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, he would look at the copper serpent and live.— Numbers 21:8-9 [King Hezekiah] also broke into pieces the copper serpent that Moses had made, for until thatRead More

On Exhibit: The Infamous 1492 Decree

By Jennifer Siegel

The original decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 will come to New York this month, as part of an exhibit commemorating the 500th anniversary of the death of Queen Isabella I. Titled “Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Two Worlds (1451-1504),” the presentation also will feature illuminated manuscripts, rareRead More

Please Touch the Art

By Miriam Colton

Hours before her troupe’s first public performance, in 2002, Adina Tal faced a quandary unlike any posed to other directors: How would her cast members know that the audience was applauding?The scenario was not uncommon for the director of the theater group Nalaga’at (“Do Touch”), who, since forming the group in late 1999, has been dealtRead More

To Get to Carnegie, Practice Your Yiddish

By Masha Leon

Putting a new spin on the old saw, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Moishe Rosenfeld, producer of the June 3 Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre Gala concert starring Neil Sedaka, told the 3,000-strong audience: “Practice, practice your Yiddish!” And so mameloshn bounced off that venerable hall’s acoustically famed walls with the KlezmaticsRead More

In Defense Of His Amorality

By Jeff Sharlet

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s admirers describe him as a man of impossible paleness, “translucent” skin laced with veins the same shade of blue as his bulging eyes. They say he was small. In photographs, his right eyebrow arches and his thread-thin upper lip sneers. His ears are large and nearly pointed, elegant despite their size, and theRead More

Arts & Culture

By Judy Budnitz