Lectures
When Journalists Are Also Activists
In a recent talk professor, photographer and gay rights activist Margaret Olin questioned whether there’s a contradiction between documenting a protest, and joining in it.
Tony Kushner Hates Writing
Tony Kushner talked about everything from Israel to ‘Lincoln’ and Obama one recent night in the friendly liberal bastion of Park Slope. He also admitted he ‘hates’ writing.
Rabbi Who Writes Too Much
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 was part of a series of spring events hosted by the Institute for Israel & Jewish Studies at Columbia University.
Alba Arikha and Her Artist Father
It was appropriate that the moderator for Alba Arikha’s talk last week at London’s Jewish Book Week was the war correspondent Janine di Giovanni. Di Giovanni is noted for preserving the human dimension in the complexities of conflict. Likewise, “Major/Minor,” Arikha’s recently published memoir, digs deep beneath the surface to explore her tempestuous relationship with her father, the Israeli-French painter Avigdor Arikha. The book strives to appreciate the influences that made her father the man he was, and how those influences shaped the woman she became, in turn.
Tortured Soul of Joseph Roth
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.
When Albert Einstein Met Rabindranath Tagore
Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore at Einstein’s Berlin home, 1926. Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.
Eighteen Solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
How many ways are there to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Given that none so far have definitively worked, the number doesn’t seem high. But in a new anthology, “United States of Palestine — Israel” (Sternberg Press, 2011) a group of Israeli, Palestinian and European left-wing writers and artists present no less than 18 solutions to the conflict.
How Felix Lembersky Smuggled Jewish Motifs Into Soviet Art
The Ukrainian Jewish painter Felix Lembersky (1913-70), whose works are currently on view through December 23 at the Rubin-Frankel Gallery at Boston University, offers ideas and issues to contemporary viewers aside from the simple beauty of his work.
Weizmann Institute's latest innovation - Pub Lectures
‘Power of context’ makes pub lectures a hit One of Israel’s most prestigious research facilities sends scientists to lecture in the eateries of Rehovot, and it’s standing room only. The Weizmann Institute (www.weizmann.ac.il) is commonly viewed as Israel’s most prestigious research institute in the sciences. But this elite institution is not elitist. Recently it hosted its second evening of “pub lectures” in local bars and restaurants. Why were these 34 lectures so popular that there was standing room only? Weizmann President Prof. Daniel Zajfman calls it “the power of the context.” “You can give lectures in lecture halls, in universities, in schools. And it would always be the same type of people who would come. It so happens that if you change the environment, if you change the context, the lecture will be very different. And the type of people who will be willing to come, will also be very different.” Zajfman, an astrophysicist, discussed the possibility of life in other parts of the universe at an Irish bar in Rehovot. Down the block, in the Black Bar and Burger, another researcher talked about how mutations and evolution can one day protect us from cancer. DOWNLOADS: VIDEOS: - HiRes: www.megaupload.com - HiRes No Narration: www.megaupload.com - Streaming: www.megaupload.com - Streaming No Narration: www.megaupload.com DOCUMENTS: - INTRO: www.megaupload.com - SCRIPT: www.megaupload.com Keywords: Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, pub lectures, Daniel Zajfman …
Of Women, Comics, and Reclaiming Jewish Stereotypes
While various critics have noted the strong influence that Jews have had on the creation of American comics, few have fully explored the role of Jewish women. Yet Jewish women have often been at the forefront of creative explorations in the graphic narrative form. And in many of their comics, Jewish identity is a fertile site of exploration of the unstable, contradictory, and ambiguous figurations of the self in a postmodern world.