Menachem Wecker
By Menachem Wecker
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The Schmooze Despite Translation Glitches, ‘Return to Haifa’ Conveys Its Message
It is sadly fitting that in a play about language’s inability to explain political and religious differences, set design and subtitles conspired to thwart the actors. But such was the case at the opening of the Tel Aviv-based Cameri Theatre’s production at Theater J in Washington, D.C. of Return to Haifa, which runs until January…
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The Schmooze Writing on Faith
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree During the Q&A period of a December 1 event at the National Press Club titled “Why journalists must understand religion,” I asked Sally Quinn, founder and moderator of the Washington Post’s On Faith, if it was an advantage for reporters to approach the religion beat with insider knowledge of…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: War and Exile in Washington
“Black woods howl in the stove/Our dog turned into a lion/but today the grownups are/Frowning like a mean witch.” So go the lyrics to Karel Berman’s song “Children at Play” from his 1944 work “Poupata” (Buds), sung by Canadian bass Robert Pomakov. Berman’s lyrics convey a naïve perspective but were composed for a bass on…
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The Schmooze Something Odd About ‘The Odd Couple’
Although they aren’t nearly as dysfunctional as the narrator and the old man with the “vulture eye” in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” or Allie and Hedy in “Single White Female,” Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar make up a lousy pair of roommates in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. But however rave the reviews…
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The Schmooze A Gadget for Gods and Days
Though about half of the 16 artists in the current show at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C., are Jewish, curators Eloise Corr Danch and David Zuckerman unabashedly admit there is nothing Jewish about the exhibit, beyond the Jewish venue. In the catalog to “I’ve Gone Looking for that Feeling Everywhere: An…
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The Schmooze Is an Ancient Menagerie Pagan or Jewish?
Though it features illustrations of a menagerie of animals that carry Jewish symbolism, an ancient Roman mosaic discovered in Lod, Israel, in 1996, is not a religious work, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the fourth-century artifact is on exhibit for the first time until April 3, 2011. According to the museum’s press…
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The Schmooze On Marilyn Monroe, Aunt Greta and an Artist’s Dress of Many Colors
According to the MoMA website, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe screen-print series challenged “the concept of the unique art work by repeating the same mechanically produced image until it appeared to be drained of all meaning.” It’s tempting to cite Warhol’s Marilyns as the inspiration for the 18 screen prints in Miriam Mörsel Nathan’s “Greta” series,…
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The Schmooze Seventies Radical Replaces Madoff in Theater J Season Opener
“Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word,” Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman) notoriously tells the parole board in “The Shawshank Redemption.” “So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.” Three decades into her incarceration as an accessory to…
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