During his 1980 Nobel Prize lecture, poet Czesław Miłosz quoted French philosopher, mystic and social agitator Simone Weil, who claimed that “distance is the soul of beauty.” “Only through a distance,” Miłosz added, “in space or in time, does reality undergo purification.” February 3 marked the centenary of Weil (1909-1943), who died in England of…
For someone who’s recently written a novel about teenage Orthodox Jewish lesbians — it could even be called the definitive novel, since there isn’t exactly a surplus of teen Orthodox lesbian fiction floating around — Leanne Lieberman isn’t really the ideal spokeswoman for the “Orthodyke” community. As a matter of fact, she’s neither Orthodox nor…
Before you even see her face, Vanessa Davis’ naked breast makes an appearance in the first panel of “Spaniel Rage,” her acclaimed book of diaristic comics. She’s vomiting into a garbage can on page two. By the third page, she’s servicing two clowns in an X-rated thought bubble. Rude? Shocking? Indecent? Try “charming, funny, and…
Amateur Shakespearologist John Hudson is not the first to question whether the actor William Shakespeare was actually the author of the body of work we’ve come to know as his, but Hudson is the first to suggest that the true author was a Jewish woman named Amelia Bassano Lanier. Of Italian descent, Bassano lived in…
Painter Joseph Solman died last week at the age of 99. In these pages last fall, Albert Fayngold penned a timely appreciation for this “fabulously gifted yet woefully underappreciated American master.”
l Enforced Marginality: Jewish Narratives on Abandoned Wives By Bluma Goldstein University of California Press, 235 pages, $39.95. We would do well to remember that when we say “according to the rabbis,” we are historically saying “according to men.” According to the male rabbis who wrote the Talmud and who, for European generations, were the…
It was just before Rosh Hashanah when poet Dinah Berland, estranged from her son for 11 years, stumbled upon a book of women’s prayers that she believes led to her reconciliation with him. As Berland tells it, in 1998 she had wandered into a Los Angeles store that sells used books, when a slim book…
News from Sotheby’s London is that the it will auction “The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem,” by German-born Jewish artist Gustav Bauernfeind. The estimate given in the press release is £600,000-800,000. It’s the latest in a line of pictorial depictions of the site to hit the auction block, as Jeannie Rosenfeld reported last month. And, compared to…
לייענט וואָס דער פּאָעט מאָריס ראָזענפֿעלד האָט געשריבן גלײַך נאָך דער שריפֿה, וואָס האָט אומגעבראַכט 146 מיידלעך.
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