This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In honor of the 125th birthday of Russian-Jewish artist Solomon Yudovin, a modest yet captivating exhibit at Russia’s St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center highlights some of his best work, including historical photographs, drawings and book illustrations. Of particular interest: A number of his watercolors from the 1930s,…
Is there anything more goyish than the Rockettes, the “precision-dance” troupe best known for its starring role in the annual “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall? Well, yes. As it turns out, the entire creative team behind the annual Radio City holiday event, which began in 1932, were Jewish men brought together by Samuel…
Sara Bloomfield joined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in its early stages, years before the project turned into one of the nation’s most visited landmarks on the National Mall in Washington. Now, after serving as director of the museum for 18 years, Bloomfield, 67, is tasked with leading the institution during a time when…
Entering the Museum of the Bible was a little like getting on a plane to Israel — it was a mess trying to get through security. There was a kind of honeycombed bomb-sniffing device, tall as a man, that a French correspondent said reminded her of something from “Star Trek.” A newspaper reporter from Alabama…
In the Palestinian village of Burqah, 86% of men are employed, but 60% work unstable, part time jobs. 75% of families have five or more members, and half of such families live beneath the poverty line of $530 per month. 55% of residents expressed concerns about the Israeli military entering the village. Statistics like this…
A Mona Lisa grin became one of Leonard Cohen’s signature facial expressions. For a poet of self-mocking intimacy, it made a perfect mask. As I walked through “A Crack in Everything,” the new exhibit about Cohen’s life and work at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, I imagined Cohen appraising the show with that half-smile….
Elinoy Kisslove is used to receiving odd answers when she asks younger participants in her Tel Aviv graffiti tours what they see in the blurry, black-and-white mural at 26 Florentin Street. “The universe,” someone said to her once. “A womb,” suggested another. Those who live near the mural – mostly 20-somethings attracted to the gentrifying…
Inside a small room in Jerusalem, four artists are taking on one of the most deep-rooted taboos in Judaism: That of the mamzer, the illegitimate child. A mamzer is someone born as the result of a sexual relationship forbidden in the Torah. Translated in English as “misbegotten” (according to the JPS Tanakh, but also commonly…
Documenta, Germany’s leading contemporary art festival, which takes place every five years in the city of Kassel, has been sued by far right members of the city’s council. According to a report by Henri Neuendorf in artnet, the councilmembers, who belong to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, are accusing the festival’s leadership of misappropriating…
According to a report in the New York Times, JCC Manhattan has announced that it has received a gift of $20 million from the Meyerson Family Foundation, which also commissioned a site-specific artwork for the center. In honored of the donation, JCC Manhattan will be renamed the Marlene Meyerson JCC, starting in February 2018. The…
Although she was murdered by the Nazis at the age of 26, the prolific German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon managed to leave behind an enormous quantity of paintings, drawings, and sketches. A bountiful 800 paintings comprise her magnum opus, “Life? Or Theatre?” An intensely personal depiction her life during wartime, “Life? Or Theatre?” transcends the purely…
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