Video footage recorded live at the Players Theatre. While Jews make up less than 3% of the American population, nearly 20% of American magicians are Jews. There’s David Copperfield, Ricky Jay and David Blaine, the endurance artist who sports several controversial tattoos, including the numbers that were branded on Primo Levi’s arm at Auschwitz. “Magic…
Perhaps it’s time to stop being surprised by the disproportionate number of successful Jews in any random profession. That’s one of the lessons to take from “Masters of Illusion: Jewish Magicians of the Golden Age,” an entertaining exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on view until September 4. The exhibit runs concurrently…
Extra! Extra! Houdini has done it again: he’s managed yet another fabulous trick. But this is the Big One, the one in which he comes back from the dead. Just look around: Google has adopted him for its logo; he’s on novels, Broadway shows, museums exhibits, movies, biographies, playing cards, computer games… Not bad for…
Leigh Kamping-Carder tells the story of the Mexican Suitcase, a collection of photographs from the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour that got lost in Mexico for almost 70 years. Ilan Stavans wonders why we can’t escape from Harry Houdini. Shoshana Olidort reviews Avi Steinberg’s “Running the Books: The Adventures…
On Halloween, 84 years after Harry Houdini vanished forever (er, died), the famed Jewish magician will return to the stage, this time in an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York. “Houdini: Art and Magic” opens on October 29 and will feature a life-size projection of the great magician performing his water torture act,…
The great escape artist Harry Houdini may have been finally done in by a well-aimed punch to the gut, but his spirit endures. And not just because of the yearly séance, either. Besides being the “Handcuff King and Jail Breaker,” Houdini was also a prolific author. Now, the entirety of The Harry Houdini Collection from…
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