Laura Hodes is a Chicago-based writer and attorney.
Laura Hodes
By Laura Hodes
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Art A Jewish painter, perhaps, but undeniably a spiritually transcendent one
Standing before the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, it's hard not to feel a sense of awakening
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Art Back from the dead — the resuscitation of an artwork that wasn’t supposed to last
Like its brilliant creator, Eva Hesse's 'Expanded Expansion' conveys the ephemerality of existence
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Art In Israel, an artist confronts his demons — and urges us to face our own
The Haifa-based Shahar Sivan has created a forest full of nightmares
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Art Look closely — Sol LeWitt’s art is a lot more Jewish than you think
A new exhibit of the conceptual artist's work illuminates his religious background (even if it's sometimes hard to see)
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Culture The Holocaust robbed them of their stories; this artist is bringing them back to life
In his new graphic nonfiction narrative book “When I Grow Up, the Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers,” author and New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein deftly gives life to the never-told stories of six Jewish teenagers in the lost world of Yiddishuania, formerly Poland/Lithuania. In the 1930s, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, then based…
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Art In Frank Lloyd Wright’s only synagogue, a masterful blending of color and light
Driving south along Old York Road in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a giant milky-glass tetrahedral dome, cross-hatched with cast-aluminum, seems to rise from the surrounding woods. A bold pastiche of prehistoric, modern and biblical, it simultaneously evokes Mayan ruins, a Japanese pagoda and Mount Sinai, while creating a wholly new form. Beth Sholom, dedicated on Sept….
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Culture In this brilliant exhibit, you can’t look at the art unless you let it look at you
At first glance, there’s nothing explicitly Jewish about Barbara Kruger’s work. Yet after viewing “Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You,” the current retrospective of her five decades of work at the Art Institute of Chicago, on view through January 24, 2022, certain Jewish themes emerge: the value of omnivorous reading, high and…
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Culture In St. Louis, a Torah curtain tells the story of a woman of valor
In the basement of the Saint Louis Art museum a luminous tapestry — the centerpiece of the exhibit “Signed in Silk: Introducing a Sacred Jewish Textile” — dazzles as if lit from within. The acquisition of this 18th century Italian ark curtain, or parokhet, created by the Jewish teenage girl Simhah Viterbo in Ancona, Italy,…
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Forverts in English A Yiddish word I never expected to see on a license plate
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Opinion Anti-Zionism forced us to withdraw from Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
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News ‘No one’s allowed to talk to me’: At UW-Madison, trying — and failing — to talk about Israel
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Fast Forward New poll: 13% of voters who switched support from Biden cite his Gaza policy
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Iranian Jew’s execution reportedly delayed after prayer campaign by Jews around the world
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Fast Forward ‘With God’s help’ Trump will be reelected, top GOP lawmaker Elise Stefanik tells Israel’s Knesset in partisan speech
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Fast Forward Israeli minister addresses convention hosted by Vox, Spanish far-right party criticized for neo-Nazi ties
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Fast Forward NYC deputy mayor charges Washington Post with antisemitism