Out and About: Iran beats Israeli Chess Record; Thorstein Veblen on Jewish Intellectualism
Detail from a mural by Maurice Sendak, now at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia.
By Ezra Glinter February 10, 2011
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The finalists for the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature have been announced.
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Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Library has become home to Maurice Sendak’s only mural.
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Jonah Lehrer retrieves Thorstein Veblen’s forgotten essay on why Jews become intellectuals.
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An Iranian grandmaster claims to have beaten an Israeli chess record after playing 614 people simultaneously in Tehran.
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In The New Republic, Cynthia Ozick writes about the Saul Bellow letters, while David A. Bell looks back on “Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris.”
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In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani welcomes, with reservations, “J.D. Salinger: A Life.”
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According to Forward contributor John Semley, William Shatner isn’t just Shatner — he’s Shatnerian.
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New hip-hop songs inspired by the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings include “#Jan25,” named after a Twitter hashtag.
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Roger Ebert calls the characters in “Just Go With It,” the new Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston-starring romantic comedy, “dumber than a box of Tinkertoys.”
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Dave Nuttycombe remembers comedian Albert Brooks (born — yes — Albert Einstein), pioneer of the “freak mentality.”
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A current exhibit in London shows the work of legendary photographer and rabbi’s daughter Eve Arnold.
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New Voices magazine goes to the Safed Klezmer Festival.
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Bob Dylan will play at the Grammy Awards together with fellow folkies Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers.
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Dylan is also among the figures whose journals are currently on display at New York’s Morgan Library, along with those of Albert Einstein, Charlotte Bronte and John Steinbeck.
