Menachem Wecker
By Menachem Wecker
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Fast Forward Rabbi Michael Broyde Tight-Lipped About ‘Sockpuppet’ Scandal
As Michael Broyde paced beside a spread of bagels, lox, and pastries in the back of the room awaiting his turn at the podium, an audience member approached. “We’ve met,” the man said. “I just wanted to wish you well.” Broyde’s keynote today at the conference “Shari’a and Halakha in America” at the Illinois Institute…
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The Schmooze The Religious Art of M.C. Escher
Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972) is known for his impossible landscapes, like waterfalls and staircases that operate in continuous loops, and his fantastically interlocking “tessellations,” like these dovetailing blue and white birds. But as viewers ascend the grand staircase in the Escher museum in The Hague and examine the works spanning Escher’s 55-year career,…
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Culture Understanding Pope Francis’s Surprising Affinity For Jewish Art
Gallery 395A is tucked away in a corner on the third floor of the Art Institute of Chicago’s modern wing. After passing works by Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti and Salvador Dalí, viewers enter Gallery 395, which features a glass wall overlooking Lake Michigan and is packed with Constantin Brâncusi, Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore sculptures….
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News What Lay Behind Maimonides’ Door in Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue
As the anonymous protagonist of Frank Stockton?s story ?The Lady or the Tiger?? grew increasingly aware, what lies beyond a portal can make a huge difference. A long tradition of adorning doors with a variety of iconographies reflects artists? understanding of what is at stake in an opaque entrance that obscures and protects what lies…
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The Schmooze Can Charles Krafft Be Defended?
After reading Frederic Spotts’s “Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics” as a Yeshiva University undergraduate, I conducted an experiment. I approached passersby on Amsterdam Avenue and showed them Hitler’s paintings, covering up the information below each work. My classmates praised the “Impressionistic” palette and the “realism” of the landscapes. When I exposed the artist credits,…
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Culture Dry Jewish Humor Informs Irving Penn’s Photographs
One can often differentiate between New Yorkers and tourists — or “out-of-towners” — based on the trajectory of their gazes; visitors, no doubt dazzled by the soaring skyline, walk around with their eyes fixed on the tops of the skyscrapers. Natives, meanwhile, navigate their way through the obstacle course of slow foot-traffic with their eyes…
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Culture Medieval Painting Hints at Ties Between Blacks and Jews
The anonymous 16th-century painter who recorded a scene of everyday life at the king’s fountain (Chafariz d’El Rei) in Lisbon depicted an impressive range of people and animals. In addition to a swan, a seal, fish, horses, dogs and birds, the artist also included more than 150 human figures. There’s so much going on in…
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Culture Silversmithing in the Yemen
In a November 9 op-ed in The Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institution fellow, referred to Yemen and its Al Qaeda problem as “the scariest challenge facing Obama abroad.” Reporting two days earlier on a Yemeni security official killed in a drive-by shooting, the Associated Press cited officials, who said that at least…
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