Menachem Wecker
By Menachem Wecker
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News Levine, an Artist Who Drew in Yiddish
David Levine, who drew idiosyncratic portraits of thousands of celebrities, politicians, artists, and other newsmakers, died on Dec. 29. The Brooklyn-born artist’s caricatures and watercolors appeared in Esquire, New York Magazine, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Yorker, Time and the New York Review of Books, where he started drawing in 1963. Although many of those…
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Culture Did William Blake Know Hebrew?
Two of William Blake’s greatest patrons were clergymen in the Church of England, under whose rites he was christened, married and buried. But the British poet and artist did not attend church for the last 40 years of his life, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, and he and his wife, Catherine, were registered as sympathizers at…
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Culture Ark Art: Actually Christian Imagery?
As synagogues swap their regular ark curtains for the white High Holy Day versions, many will unwittingly showcase a pair of symbols not only of Christian origin, but whose very content symbolizes God’s rejection of the Jews. The culprits — two twisted or vine-encircled pillars — appear in places as august and storied as Safed’s…
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Culture My Name is Apostle Lev
I wasn’t thinking about Mormons on March 4, when I tweeted about my review of “My Name is Asher Lev.” Thirty-six minutes later, I heard from William Morris, an expert on Mormon arts and culture. “Excellent review,” Morris noted. “For (I believe) obvious reasons, ‘My Name Is Asher Lev’ is very popular with Mormon writers…
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News Past Meets Present: Filming Jewish Life in Prague
Mark Podwal is obsessed with Prague. Not only has the New York-based artist and dermatologist visited the city 15 times, but he also has a Golem story by which he swears. In 1997, during a major restoration of Prague’s 700-year-old Altneuschul synagogue, the curator of the project invited Podwal to see the normally off-limits attic…
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Culture Art That Does Not Hide Itself
Most of the works that appear in the exhibit Idol Anxiety, at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, feature Christian and pagan content. But exhibit curator Aaron Tugendhaft credits the “heightened awareness” he developed from studying the Talmud as a child with helping him discover “valuable distinctions not seen by…
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Israel News Willy Loman’s Jewish Roots
Yarmulkes are the new black in performances of “Death of a Salesman.” Inspired by the 1953 play, Traveling Jewish Theatre’s recent production of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning show featured Biff, Happy, Bernard and Charley wearing skullcaps at Willy Loman’s funeral. Biff and Happy, however, removed theirs immediately, “so it was very brief, as if they…
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Culture Chasing the Passover Bunny
The Passover Haggadah is jam-packed with symbols of redemption from the Egyptian enslavement. But scholars are divided over the significance of one particularly unusual symbol: rabbit hunts. These images appear mostly in Renaissance Haggadot. Even to laypeople, illustrations of hares — chased by dogs that are often accompanied by men on horseback — are curious…
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