Useless. Egocentric. Negligible. These are the words David Assaf, a professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, used to describe a condition called “grapho-mania,” or excessive writing. The subject was at the center of a talk delivered March 28 called “Hasidic Grapho-Mania: The Strange Case of Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick of Brooklyn-Yavne’el.” The program…
Poet, filmmaker, mystic, photographer and publisher Ira Cohen, who died last April, can still fill a room with energy. With the aid of Cohen’s address book, friends gathered this month at the Living Theatre on New York’s Lower East Side to celebrate the life of the Bronx-born countercultural figure who spent years mixing it up…
Colorful tumblers, bowls, vases and pitchers beckoned viewers to come close and examine their artisanship. The handmade creations were the work of Daniel Bellow, whose pottery was on display at the recent New York International Gift Fair at the Javits Center in New York. The potter had traveled from the Berkshires to show his high-fire…
Philip will have to make room for another Roth. The irony is that Joseph Roth, a Galician-born Austro-Hungarian Jewish writer, dead for nearly three quarters of a century, has never been more alive in the English speaking world. Translator Michael Hofmann, whose gifted ear has graced 11 of Roth’s titles including the recently published “Joseph…
Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore at Einstein’s Berlin home, 1926. Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute. One was a Bengali polymath and Nobel laureate with white flowing beard and piercing eyes. The other was the world famous scientist, with frizzy hair and unkempt appearance. When Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein met in New York, it…
More than a month after the Occupy Wall Street protests began, Karl Marx has come to Zuccotti Park to see what the hubbub is all about. Admittedly, the 19th-century political philosopher was not there himself, but was present in the form of a small puppet from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The puppet is…
Courtesy of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Paul Simon is best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist — not a college professor and academic. But Simon, who was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on October 1, had a brief stint in academia, teaching a songwriting class at New…
What is on Gary Shteyngart’s mind? Only a clairvoyant would know. It’s much easier to surmise what’s on his bookshelves. The Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village has set up a display in which well-known writers take turns exhibiting their favorite books. In June, it looked as though a bookcase in Gary Shteyngart’s living room…
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