Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Over the years, I’ve attended lots of symposia but never one that began with the ringing of chimes and concluded with a most hearty and prolonged round of applause. These two sounds, along with the sight of presenters swaying to the beat of “Yiddish Melodies in Swing” or singing…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree People in funny hats, empty chairs, a capella singing, overheated rhetoric, a red dress — the Republicans put on quite a show in Tampa last week at their national convention. Most of it left me cold. What didn’t was the ardent public display of religion, especially the ritualized invocation….
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Nearly 30 years ago, when musician and musicologist Henry Sapoznik first stumbled across a cache of aluminum transcription disks of Yiddish radio shows from interwar America, little did he suspect that they would find a home at the Library of Congress. Abandoned in an attic, deposited in a dumpster,…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Two friends of mine, ardent champions of all things cultural, were en route to Los Angeles the other day when they decided to stop off in Bentonville, Arkansas, to see the brand new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Given all the advance publicity the museum received, they knew…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree The news that members of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Association of Bilgoraj intend to build a replica of the Western Wall at the site of the Polish town’s Jewish cemetery undoubtedly raised an eyebrow or two. Coming on the heels of an announcement that the International Pro-Life Memorial and…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Over the past half century or so, Israel has been associated in the public mind with lots of things, but movie-making has not been among them — at least not until recently. As the Forward observed this week, that’s about to change. Israel now harbors high hopes of becoming…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree I learned recently of a brand new app, “Anne’s Amsterdam,” which provides all sorts of digital details, both personal and geographical, about Anne Frank and her city. I can’t say I’m surprised. In the years since the publication of her diary, Anne Frank’s life and times — and above…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Like the making of history, the writing of history is a collaborative venture. It may look as if ideas are entirely the product of the individual imagination but, as any honest, straight-talking historian will tell you, they are the result of a group effort. The writer-cum-historian gets all the…
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