Anyone who knows Shalom Auslander’s work knows he is haunted by the past — both his own personal past and the collective Jewish one. But for the sake of potential new readers, he is making this fact abundantly clear in the trailers he has made for his soon-to-be-released novel, “Hope: A Tragedy.” In the trailers,…
Most people encounter Emma Lazarus only inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” written in 1883, has become inextricably identified in the public mind with the wave of immigration to the United States from the 1880s until 1924. However, a new free mobile tour produced by the Museum of…
Israeli music legend Arik Einstein has released a song to welcome Gilad Shalit home. The song, “Now That You Are Here,” was written by Einstein’s longtime collaborator Guy Bocati. It is a heartfelt ballad telling the returned soldier how much it means for the entire nation that he is back, and that he should take…
A year after a sensational debut in New York’s Union Square Park last year, the “Sukkah City” idea has made its way westward to St. Louis. The 10 winners of the “Sukkah City STL” design competition were announced October 4, and they are now in the midst of installing their structures on the campus of…
It’s no coincidence that The Klezmasters are highly reminiscent of The Klezmatics. The former band, which bills itself as Russia’s only klezmer orchestra, was inspired by the latter. Having been created in 2003 by a group of classical music students who met through Hillel in Moscow, The Klezmasters have been gaining notoriety in recent years…
“It’s nice enough to be able to make a living as a writer, so awards are absolutely gravy,” David Rakoff told The Arty Semite after winning the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor on October 3 for his third collection of essays, “Half Empty.” “It’s lovely,” he said in a phone conversation this morning. “But…
The visual metaphor in the opening scenes of “HaMorah Irena” (“Teacher Irena”), the Ophir Award-nominated documentary about a teacher in the poorest neighborhood of West Jerusalem, tells you everything you need to know about this exceptionally devoted educator. However, you don’t know that until you come to the end of the film. In “Teacher Irena,”…
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein was at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival last week when she received an unexpected phone call from the MacArthur Foundation telling her she was a recipient of their 2011 fellowship. The “Genius Award,” as it is called, is a no-strings-attached grant of $500,000, paid out over five years. Weilerstein, 29, is…
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