Never Walk Alone: Jewish Identities in Sport At the Munich Jewish Museum Through January 7, 2018 The 1936 Berlin Olympics showcased the Nazi love of spectacle and buttressed the regime’s international legitimacy. To avert boycott threats, the government temporarily muted overt manifestations of its anti-Semitic policies, removing discriminatory signage and toning down newspaper rhetoric. But…
When a Jewish businessman in Cologne, Germany, named Franz Levy died in 1937, his family commissioned the renowned German artist Käthe Kollwitz to design his gravestone. Kollwitz, who was not Jewish, sculpted pairs of hands reaching in subtle relief from opposite sides of the stone surface, fingers gripping wrists, holding on. It arouses a feeling…
Tel Aviv’s Florentin neighborhood is known for its constantly changing graffiti — and for the artists, eccentrics, hipsters, and refugees that call it home. But there is also the Love Car. The Love Car changes parking spots, resurfacing in different corners of the neighborhood. Covered in hearts, it is a form of moving graffiti. If…
Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through July 30 The story of the Lodz Ghetto has become folkloric. Chronicled in novels such as Leslie Epstein’s “King of the Jews” and Steve Sem-Sandberg’s “The Emperor of Lies,” this was the place that the dictatorial Mordechai Chaim…
Summer! The beach! Camp for the kids! And maybe, this time around, endless hours spent inside, staring in horror at Twitter. If that’s a fate you’d like to avoid, look to one of the following books, which promise to be some of the most interesting releases of the summer and fall. Some will distract, some…
“The American Dream” refers to the notion that embedded in the founding documents of our nation is a framework that guarantees equality of opportunity for socio-economic success to all. Never mind that the reality of American history, law and socio-economic practice has been one that has at best been selective in who is allowed onto…
AT first glance, Diane Arbus’s parks look like our parks — and yet they stand apart from them. What might a Martian learn about us from this, people sometimes ask of a text. Arbus’s photos would tell a Martian little: They rather look as though they may have been made by one. ‘In the Park,”…
The Center for Jewish History has announced that its new President and Chief Executive Officer will be David N. Myers, the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History in the UCLA History Department, where he has taught for the past 25 years. Myers is also the author of such books as “Re-inventing the Jewish…
On the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, a massive model railroad tribute in New York City’s Times Square displays the religious, archaeological and architectural diversity of Israel’s capital – while also playfully pointing out that many Israelis still drive like schmucks. At Gulliver’s Gate, a new Manhattan tourist attraction that officially opened on…
Last night, trying, excitedly, to summarize “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” Emil Ferris’s debut graphic novel — or at least Part 1 of it — for my husband, I hit upon an obstacle: The book, which takes the form of a spiral-bound, three-hole-punch sketchbook/detective case study, kept by 10-year-old Chicagoan Karen Reyes, is kind of,…
In a project melding interfaith dialogue and feminist theory, a Toronto gallery brought together Jewish and Muslim women to study sacred texts. Guided by Toronto artist Rochelle Rubenstein, the women created scrolls that meshed ancient verses with very modern meditations on the female body. The goal: To explore traditional responses to menstruation, breastfeeding and mourning…
100% of profits support our journalism
