wecker: all the jewish art that's worthy to print

Where I am

2007-01-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

I am on Iconia for the time being... I may come back to visit...

Portfolio

2007-01-29T14:05:00.000-05:00

The Calm Before The Storm

2007-01-10T18:49:00.000-05:00

@ the JPress.

Dai (Enough)
Written and Performed by Iris Bahr
Directed by Will Pomerantz
The Culture Project
55 Mercer St., New York,
212-253-7017, http://www.cultureproject.org/

Iris Bahr’s new play, Dai (Enough), is an effort in dramatic irony from beginning to end. In a Tel Aviv café, a reporter, described in the script as “an androgynous, uber-intellectual, icy, well-groomed British reporter,” Christiane Saloniki, interviews coffee drinking patrons – mere minutes before a homicide bomber enters the café. The audience watches the characters state their final words (unbeknownst to them) before dying, one at a time. The play then is a series of soliloquies in which a diverse array of characters, both Israeli and Palestinian, tell their life stories.

"Paintings That Pray"

2007-01-04T23:29:00.001-05:00

At the JPress.

"Film seen as transcending Arab-Israeli politics"

2006-12-21T07:32:00.000-05:00

At the WJWeek.

3 New Articles

2006-12-20T18:55:00.000-05:00

1. "Medieval Missal and More on Display at Walters" at the Arlington Catholic Herald.

2. "Jewish Books Of Art At The National Museum Of Women In The Arts" at The Jewish Press.

3. "Speaker looks at ethnic diversity in Israel" at the Washington Jewish Week.

Prosecuting Auschwitz

2006-12-13T22:57:00.001-05:00

"Prosecuting Auschwitz" is online at the JPress.

The synagogue doll house

2006-12-07T08:12:00.000-05:00

"The synagogue doll house" is in the WJWeek.

"A Coat Of Transparent Colors"

2006-12-06T21:39:00.000-05:00

"A Coat Of Transparent Colors" is now online at the JPress.

Arts-or-Crafts

2006-11-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

"Arts-or-Crafts" is in this week's Forward.

Honeybee Songs @ JPress.com

2006-11-29T15:51:00.001-05:00

"Honeybee Songs" is online here.

Donor Saints @ DCist.com

2006-11-28T16:23:00.000-05:00

"Donor Saints" is online at DCist.com.

A Cat’s Bar Mitzvah @ JPress

2006-11-22T17:48:00.000-05:00

"A Cat’s Bar Mitzvah" is online at the Jewish Press.

One More Dead Jew, And Other Poems @ JPress

2006-11-15T13:46:00.001-05:00

"One More Dead Jew, And Other Poems" is online at the JPress.

Conservative leader pledges unified message, restructuring @WJWeek

2006-11-09T13:10:00.000-05:00

"Conservative leader pledges unified message, restructuring" is now online at the Washington Jewish Week.

A Haunting Tale Of Assimilation @ JPress

2006-11-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

"A Haunting Tale Of Assimilation" is online at the JPress.

Wiesel: Education keyto fighting fanaticism @ WJWeek

2006-11-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

Wiesel: Education keyto fighting fanaticism is online at the WJWeek.

When Avant-Garde Becomes Mainstream @ DCist

2006-11-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

"When Avant-Garde Becomes Mainstream" is online at DCist.com.

Matzah communion @ American Jewish Life Mag.

2006-11-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

"Matzah communion" is online at the American Jewish Life Magazine here.

Reconsidering Iraqi Women @ JPress

2006-11-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

"Reconsidering Iraqi Women" is now online at the JPress.

Playful pottery from an octogenarian

2006-10-26T00:40:00.000-04:00

"Playful pottery from an octogenarian" is online at the WJWeek.

A Matter Of Death And Death: The Washington National Opera Chooses Sophie

2006-10-25T18:07:00.001-04:00

"A Matter Of Death And Death: The Washington National Opera Chooses Sophie" is online at the JPress.

Should Looted Art From The Holoucast Be Returned? A Response To Michael Kimmelman

2006-10-18T19:02:00.000-04:00

"Should Looted Art From The Holoucast Be Returned? A Response To Michael Kimmelman" is online at the JPress.

New online group aims to gather 600,000 virtual Jews on Facebook

2006-10-11T21:03:00.000-04:00

"New online group aims to gather 600,000 virtual Jews on Facebook" is online at the JTA. (May require login)

What’s New With Jewish-American Superheroes? @ The JPress

2006-10-04T10:56:00.000-04:00

"What’s New With Jewish-American Superheroes?" is online at the JPress.

“Take a sock at Hitler! Sock your dough in bonds and stamps!” says one comic. Another shows Captain Marvel, Jr. defeating a Nazi and insisting, “Come on, you Nazi man, we’ve got a date with the American Embassy.” Another shows Captain America breaking into a Nazi lab to rescue a patient from an evil Nazi doctor (with a green face), who is performing unethical paralyzing experiments. A fourth one still shows Superman bending the gun of a tank with swastikas, rendering it harmless.

The Masters of American Comics at the Jewish Museum is accompanied by a show by the same name at the Newark Museum. They differ in chronology (the Jewish Museum looks at the second half of the 20th century, while the Newark Museum looks at the first half) but both show a slew of comic book artists, many of them Jewish. Some of the names are familiar, while others will only prove recognizable to comic book “junkies”: Winsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger, George Herriman, E.C. Segar, Frank King, Chester Gould, Milton Caniff, Charles M. Schulz, Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Gary Panter and Chris Ware. Still others surface in the Superheroes: Good and Evil in American Comics section of the Jewish Museum show.

... But what is new with Jewish comic book art? The Jewish Museum and Newark Museum shows are to be commended for their tremendous research and ability to collect comic books and strips. There are nearly 600 objects in both museums, according to the press releases, which is remarkable – even to those who see comic books as the domain of kids. Yet, unless the exhibits can add something vital to the discussion of American comic books and superheroes, they are doomed to just be a parking garage of once-significant strips.

Walking Away From Icons @ The Forward

2006-09-28T18:57:00.000-04:00

"Walking Away From Icons" is online at the Forward here. It is a review of the forthcoming Lissitzky show at the Phillips Collection.

WHOMPING THE NAZIS @ NYPRESS

2006-09-27T23:03:00.000-04:00

"WHOMPING THE NAZIS" is online at the NY Press.

Swastikas And Couches

2006-09-27T14:31:00.000-04:00

"Swastikas And Couches" is online at the JPress. It's a review of the following show:

Freud's World in Photos: A Photographic Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Sigmund Freud's Birth
Through October 6, 2006
The Austrian Embassy
3524 International Court, NW Washington, D.C.
202-895-6714
Website

Jewish Roaches @ Jewish Press

2006-09-20T23:18:00.000-04:00

My new column, "Jewish Roaches" is online at the here:

Cockroaches are not usually associated with Judaism. They might show up unwanted during Pesach cleaning. But they do not chew their cud, nor do they have split hooves. They are equally lacking in the fins and scales departments, and they seem to be absent even from the list of kosher creepers and crawlers like certain varieties of locusts. But as Will Eisner illustrates in his graphic novel, The Contract With God Trilogy, roaches were frequent players in the lives of Jewish immigrants in the early part of the century.

Eisner, who died in January 2005, is often hailed as the father of the graphic novel (a medium that joins the novel with the hardcover children’s picture book) and one of the most important comic book artists. In a review in these pages in July of 2005, I explored Eisner’s book (posthumous) The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and I discussed Eisner’s ability to navigate the tight line between art and propaganda. Eisner’s The Contract With God Trilogy is somewhat of a more ambitious plot to tackle the narratives that surround a specific Lower East Side neighborhood, particularly Dropsie Street.

Art That Produces, Not Consumes @ YU Museum

2006-09-13T12:19:00.000-04:00

"Art That Produces, Not Consumes" is in this week's issue of the JPress:

The current show at the Yeshiva University Museum is bizarrely titled. “Feminine Principals: Works in Iron, Fiber and Glass” carries unexpected implications on several counts. It is not often that women, especially Jewish women, are celebrated in the arts. Even less likely are exhibits of work by Jewish women artists who identify as feminists. But the invocation of “principals” – where “principles” seems more natural – suggests that the three artists in the show are the most important, feminist Jewish artists. Viewers who expect such results will be disappointed (since there is much feminist art that is at least as good that is not in the show). But the show is not without merit.

One Thousand Words Are Worth A Picture @ JPress

2006-09-06T11:54:00.000-04:00

"One Thousand Words Are Worth A Picture" is online at the JPress:

Book collectors are often pack-rats that are obsessed with the printed word in all of its manifestations. If Jews are the People of the Book, Jewish book collectors can be satirically characterized as bookaholics who would sell their kitchen table for added shelf space. It is thus somewhat surprising to discover a book collector who not only managed to focus his collection on ancient Jewish manuscripts, but who also conceived of his books as art objects, more than simply as carrying cases for texts.

Where many collectors seek texts that are interesting for the significance of the words, Joseph Gradenwitz, whose collection is up for auction at Kestenbaum and Company, approached collecting with the eye of an artist. As Daniel Kestenbaum – who founded the auction house 10 years ago – described it, “Gradenwitz took the humdrum books and made them into this,” pointing at a book bound in red and gold, with silk on the inside cover. “You seldom see interesting binding like this.”

Eight Jewish Dada Artists @ JPress

2006-08-30T11:20:00.000-04:00

"Eight Jewish Dada Artists" is online here:

George Grosz’s 1944 painting, “Cain, or Hitler in Hell” shows the Nazi leader with his iconic moustache and uniform sitting sadly, mopping his brow. Surrounding Hitler, Grosz captures his interpretation of eternal punishment, with fiery reds, whites, and yellows, dark blacks, and piles of skeletons. By casting Hitler as the Biblical Cain, Grosz draws attention to the question G-d asks of Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Grosz hints at the question that plagues Hitler as he mops his brow: Where are the six million Jews you should have treated as brothers?

Painting Trauma And Relief: Hopeful Holocaust Paintings @ JPress

2006-08-23T15:18:00.000-04:00

My new column, "Painting Trauma And Relief: Hopeful Holocaust Paintings" is online at the Jewish Press here:

For American artists, the attacks on the Twin Towers are a particularly difficult subject matter. One feels a responsibility to capture the events of 9/11 (they are too important to ignore), but there is a lot at stake in painting the burning towers. If the depiction fails, it runs the risk of trivializing the tragedy. Painting, like any other language, ought to be able to communicate any idea if it is used correctly. But trauma is often the toughest thing to capture, whether in words, paint or music.

Art Spiegelman’s ambitious graphic novel, “In the Shadow of No Towers” (reviewed in these pages on November 17, 2004), presents the artist’s response to 9/11. Spiegelman sees trauma as inspiring – “disaster is my muse!”– but he worries that he draws too slowly to keep up with the news. “I’d feel like such a jerk if a new disaster strikes while I’m still chipping away at the last one,” he says. On one page, he draws “some guy on Canal Street” who is painting the towers; but when he looks up, “the... model had moved.”

Spiegelman is not the only artist obsessed with 9/11. In just the last few months, Paul Greengrass’ “United 93” (2006) and Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” (2006) have explored the attacks in movie form. But Rebecca Schweiger’s oil painting “September 11” is a different sort of memorial. In “September 11,” Schweiger uses a palette of red, white and black, in a mixture of drips and textures that evoke spider webs. The painting appears to bleed and explode at once, and the only stable parts of the towers are the tops, which resemble a thick black letter em.

"Red Sox fall, but Jews rise — at least in Denis Leary’s telling" @ JTA

2006-08-18T14:24:00.000-04:00

My first article at JTA (and not art this time) is entitled "Red Sox fall, but Jews rise — at least in Denis Leary’s telling." It is online here and reprinted (so far) at Jewish St. Louis.

The Challenge of Defining Jewish Art @ the Forward

2006-08-17T12:58:00.000-04:00

"The Challenge of Defining Jewish Art" is online at the Forward:

In 1966, art critic Harold Rosenberg gave a talk at The Jewish Museum in New York. “First, they build a Jewish museum; then they ask, ‘Is there a Jewish art?’ Jews!” he quipped. But Rosenberg went on to give his own response to the question. “The gentile answer is, ‘Yes, there is a Jewish art, and no, there is no Jewish art,’” he said. “The Jewish answer is, ‘What do you mean by Jewish art?’”

Indeed, what do we mean? Does any art created by a Jewish person qualify? Or must there be something substantive about the art? And if it’s a quality to be found in the art itself, how to define it?

Is Klezmer Making A Comeback? @ Jewish Press

2006-08-16T16:13:00.000-04:00

"Is Klezmer Making A Comeback?" is online at the JPress.

Introducing The Mets In Yiddish @ The Jewish Press

2006-08-09T11:16:00.000-04:00

"Introducing The Mets In Yiddish" is online at the Jewish Press:

“When you go back and you think about what it is,” Jake Ehrenreich told me over the phone, pausing to put down his cell phone whenever he saw a nearby police car, “it’s all about tradition.” Tradition and cell phones might be the perfect symbol for Ehrenreich’s new autobiographical play, “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn.” The play is a tale about growing up from being the kid who tried so hard to be all-American, only to be reduced to “super immigrant Jew kid with Holocaust survivor parents.” Then his mother would call him into the house from his stickball games, yelling “Yonkee!” Fast forward to Ehrenreich’s career, singing and acting, beginning with hotel gigs in the Catskills.

Brooklyn has become somewhat of a theatrical “frequent flyer” lately, which Mark Schoenfeld’s and Barri McPherson’s recent Broadway show, “Brooklyn: The Musical” – which proved as stylized and unconvincing in its portrait of Brooklyn as “What a Girl Wants: London Calling” – was in its portrayal of the capital of England. But Ehrenreich’s off-Broadway affair presents a convincing portrait of Brooklyn, for which the playwright spent a year and a half interviewing his father and rummaging through boxes of old family photographs. The first draft of the script – which was initially titled “Growing Up in America,” but was changed to underscore the Jewish angle – was a whopping eight hours, but Ehrenreich knew he wanted to cut the play to fewer than two hours for the sake of his audiences’ attention spans.

Cobalt Blue, Israeli Hue @ JBooks.com

2006-08-04T16:01:00.000-04:00

My newest article, "Cobalt Blue, Israeli Hue" is online at JBooks.com. It is a review of Elizabeth Rosner's Blue Nude.

Shahn, Davidson at Smithsonian Portrait Gallery @ Washington Jewish Week

2006-07-27T09:06:00.000-04:00

"Shahn, Davidson at Smithsonian Portrait Gallery" is now online at the Washington Jewish Week:

Lithuanian-American painter Ben Shahn's portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist known as the "father" of the atom bomb, conveys a sense of unease. The wall text at the National Portrait Gallery, where the drawing hangs, calls it "a symbol of troubled humanity."

Shahn's lines ‹ evocative of Picasso's stylized simplicity ‹ show Oppenheimer's fingers awkwardly holding an open book. His suit is as unflattering to his figure as is his rigid facial expression. The physicist is not simply a man torn apart at the thought of the damaging potential of his invention; he is paralyzed and almost literally straight-jacketed by his suit.

The Shahn-Oppenheimer tag team is one of many instances of a Jewish artist depicting a Jewish subject at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, which reopened in the District this month after a six-year renovation. Officials at both the museum and the gallery have no access to lists of artists' religious affiliations and did not want even to venture a guess as to how many Jewish artists and Jewish models are featured in the collection.

But walking through the collections, one encounters nearly 100 pieces of Jewish art, from pop art painter Alex Katz's portraits ‹ one of which resembles a cardboard cutout endemic to movie theaters and window advertising ‹ to R.B. Kitaj's portrait of Russian-Jewish pianist Vladimir Horowitz, to Larry Rivers' self-portrait.

Would Picasso’s Real Killer Please Stand Up? @ Jewish Press

2006-07-26T16:00:00.000-04:00

My newest article, entitled "Would Picasso’s Real Killer Please Stand Up?" is online at the Jewish Press:

In the world premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s new play (that opened in Washington DC for a 3-day run) Picasso has more than simply skeletons in his closet. Picasso’s Closet, directed by John Dillon at Theater J of the DC JCC, resides somewhere between creative non-fiction and historical fiction, with an aftertaste of absurdist theater.

The Automotive Intifada @ B'nai B'rith Magazine

2006-07-21T13:13:00.000-04:00

Here is a piece I co-wrote with Allison Kaplan Sommer at B'nai B'rith Magazine entitled "The Automotive Intifada: You think terrorism is deadly? Try getting behind the wheel in Israel."

Interracial Chalk Drawings And Dances @ Jewish Press

2006-07-19T20:44:00.000-04:00

My new Jewish Press column "Interracial Chalk Drawings And Dances" is online here:

With their own long history of suffering oppression and hate fresh in their minds, many American Jews played important roles in the civil rights movement. Jewish merchant Julius Rosenwald, who bought one-fourth interest in Sears, Roebuck and Co. before it became a huge business, founded the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1917 to help improve education for African Americans. The fund helped launch over 5,000 schools in 15 states in the south, as well as several universities. In 1964, Jews were arrested with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel prominently marched with Dr. King in the struggle for civil rights. In the arts, Jewish, Puerto Rico-born photographer Benedict J. Fernandez recorded many of the events of the U.S. civil rights movement. His images of Dr. King’s funeral are now iconic.

The current show at the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center, “Through Their Eyes: Captured Moments of Childhood,” explores the powerful black and white photographs of the Jewish photographers Godfrey Frankel and Helen Levitt that depict Jewish and African American subjects.

Primitive Parisian Jungles @ DCist

2006-07-13T11:19:00.000-04:00

My newest post entitled "Primitive Parisian Jungles" is online at DCist about the Henri Rousseau show at the National Gallery.

Jewtopia and Keeping up with the Steins review at the Jewish Press

2006-07-12T11:50:00.000-04:00

My newest Jewish Press article, "Is Judaism Cool?" is online here. It attends to Jewtopia and Keeping Up With The Steins.

Circular Art: Two Eva Hesse Shows @ JPress

2006-07-06T00:38:00.000-04:00

"Circular Art: Two Eva Hesse Shows" is online at the Jewish Press:

Throughout her career, German Jewish artist Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was obsessed with the motif of the circle. In her diaries, Hesse connected her circular images with her own life. “I go in circles. Maybe therefore my drawings…” she wrote. Indeed, her life followed a circular path, punctuated by pain and tragedy on both ends. At age three, Eva’s parents put her and her sister Helen aboard a children’s train from their native Hamburg to escape the Nazis. Eva and Helen successfully circumvented the war, and later were reunited with their Holocaust surviving parents.

Baptizing Modigliani the Jew @ JBooks.com

2006-06-29T22:21:00.000-04:00

My review of Jeffrey Meyers' new book Modigliani: A Life is online at JBooks.com.

Contemporarily Old @ NY Arts

2006-06-29T02:36:00.000-04:00

My review, "Contemporarily Old," is online at NY Arts:

The objects that adorn the glass cases of the show "Obsolete, Odd and Absolutely Ooky: Stuff from the DAR Museum Vaults" on view at the Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) until September 2nd are ironically accessible and modern. According to the press release, the 18th and 19th Century objects "were useful, in-fashion and even innovative at the time, but now seem so unusual it is hard to believe the objects were ever real." This holds true for some of the pieces but the most interesting objects are surprisingly familiar.

A Painter on Earth Whose Brush Reaches the Heavens @ the Forward

2006-06-29T02:05:00.000-04:00

My newest column, "A Painter on Earth Whose Brush Reaches the Heavens" is now online at the Forward:

'I cannot imagine German culture without Judaism," painter Anselm Kiefer said. "One thing is that Germans committed the immense crime of killing Jews. The other is that they amputated themselves. They took half of German culture and killed it." As a result, Kiefer, who was born to Catholic parents in Donaueschingen, Germany, during the final months of World War II, has become a slightly obsessive aesthetic documenter of the Holocaust.

Perhaps in the tradition of his teacher, German conceptualist Joseph Beuys — who recalled that "everyone went to church, and everyone went to the Hitler Youth" — Kiefer, whose work is on display through September 10 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., uses a highly wide range of "found objects" to create his blend of Holocaust art, including symbols from Ancient Egypt, Greek and Nordic cultures; Jewish mysticism; early Christian theology, and alchemy.

ARTFUL SCRIBBLES: Jackson Pollock’s paintings @ the New York Press

2006-06-28T17:15:00.000-04:00

My new article, "ARTFUL SCRIBBLES: Jackson Pollock’s paintings" is online at the NY Press:

Pollock’s bold and almost childlike drawings that transcend the paper’s boundaries in many ways anticipated the later works where Pollock would actually stand on his canvases while he dripped paint. Perhaps that is why he spoke of standing in his paintings. But, just as Piet Mondrian was known for his minimalist grids though he painted representational still lives and landscapes in the 1910s, Pollock will probably always be far better known as the King of Drip than for his drawings.

Smile And Say Cheese: Children Maimed By War @ The Jewish Press

2006-06-22T18:12:00.000-04:00

My new column, "Smile And Say Cheese: Children Maimed By War" is online at the Jewish Press:

Children playing with dolls generally make good photo ops. They fit well on wall calendars, interspersed among images of flowers and colorful birds, to be gazed at while listening to CDs with sounds of the rainforest. But photographer David Seymour photographed a different kind of child: the vulnerable, persecuted sort that frolics not on picturesque jungle gyms but in war zones. “Children Playing with Something That Was Once a Doll, Naples” (1948) is a perfect example. The children are smiling, as they should be. But their clothes are tattered, and the “doll” with which they are playing has been so deformed that it is unrecognizable as a doll without the help of the photograph title.

12 other bloggers list pataphysics as interest!

2006-06-11T02:10:00.000-04:00

I was shocked to learn here that 12 other blogs (I make the lucky 13) list pataphysics as an interest. This must be the first sign of the apocalypse.
In other pataphysics news, there is a magazine, an institute (and here), a research library, and of course, the College de Pataphysique.

I Made Jewschool!

2006-06-11T02:06:00.000-04:00

Here!

A Primer On Palestinian Art @ Muslim Times

2006-06-08T22:42:00.000-04:00

My review "A Primer On Palestinian Art" is online at the Muslim Times.

'Beyond Insane' Biblical Paintings @ The Forward

2006-06-08T08:34:00.000-04:00

My column on Archie Rand, called "'Beyond Insane' Biblical Paintings" is now online at the Forward:

My artist friends think I'm crazy," said Archie Rand, who is the first to admit that his newest project is "beyond insane."

Indeed, Rand's series is arguably the most ambitious Jewish art enterprise, perhaps ever: 613 canvases, one per commandment. Surrounded by stacks upon stacks of paintings in his studio, Rand is easy to compare to King Lear cursing the indifferent storm. He speaks of Judaism's "organ rejection of art" and of the need to "tell the entire notion of Western, goyish aesthetics to go to hell."

Abstract-Looking Meditation on Thomas Merton's Art @ Arlington Catholic Herald

2006-06-07T10:33:00.000-04:00

My review of "Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton" by Roger Lipsey (New Seeds Books, 2006), entitled "Abstract-Looking Meditation on Thomas Merton's Art" is now online at the Arlington Catholic Herald:

The disappearing ink act performed at the Summer Palace in Beijing might best symbolize Thomas Merton’s art and life. At the palace, retired calligraphers gather to write with water on the sidewalks. Though the sun quickly evaporates the water, the marks seem all the more imperative for their fleetingness.
As both American Trappist monk and celebrated writer, Merton’s life made powerful evaporating marks.

Letter calls my "trying to boost the morale of a people who prefer life in the 8th century to the 21st, bizarre."

2006-06-06T08:21:00.000-04:00

Here is an email I received in response to my article in Arab American News:

Dear Mr Wecker,

I reading your article in the Arab American News, and was amused by your comparisons to Nobel Prize winners in the Jewish community to Palestinian art.

I am a lover of the arts. I collect art, and other beautiful things as well. However, one cannot make a comparision to the development of a cure for a disease, or the discovery of a gene that can lead to stopping Huntingtons disease to embroiderary, wood carving or even ancient Islamic art.

While we can give kudos to the Muslims for the arts, this is moot in comparison to discovery and technology that improves the quality of human lives. This is something that Muslims, until today, do not take into consideraton while they teach hate, and strap bombs on their children. Who cares how many pages are on google about Islamic art? David Duke and the KKK have more pages than Ghandi.

I find your trying to boost the morale of a people who prefer life in the 8th century to the 21st, bizarre.

Allyson Rowen Taylor

Allyson seems to be the Associate Director of the Western Region of the American Jewish Congress (see here, although I can't find her on the AJCongresss site).

I don't know if it's worth posting a response here, but it is pretty clear that I in no way suggested in the article that art is better than cures for diseases. It seems silly to get in a discussion about how many Arab inventions (many in mathematics for one) helped shape modern medicine. That is simply not my point, which still stands, that we ignore Palestinian culture, specifically fine arts.

Further, to say that Palestinians prefer living in the 8th century is "bizarre." Not to mention that many Jews (by their own admission) would happily live in the 8th century as well.

Am I wrong?

Book is one small step for Palestinian art @ Arab American News

2006-05-28T12:04:00.000-04:00

My newest review, "Book is one small step for Palestinian art" is online at the Arab American News. It is a review of Gannit Ankori's "Palestinian Art." I have already gotten one email response, which read in part "I find your trying to boost the morale of a people who prefer life in the 8th century to the 21st, bizarre."

Joel Cohen's new book "Moses and Jesus: A Conversation"

2006-05-26T12:25:00.000-04:00

Joel Cohen's new book "Moses and Jesus: A Conversation" is out! (I edited.) It is online here.

2 New Columns on Hesse and Israel

2006-05-24T13:47:00.000-04:00

I have 2 new reviews.

"ASSAILING THE CIRCLE: Eva Hesse: drawings & sculpture" is in this week's edition of New York Press.

And, "The Middle Eastern Conflict In C-major," which attends to Barry Frydlender and Misha Shulman's play Desert Sunrise is in The Jewish Press.

Toni Morrison most Beloved by Times

2006-05-17T12:36:00.000-04:00

Toni Morrison's "Beloved" is the best work of American fiction of the last 25 years, according to the Times.

The study was conducted by Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, who polled "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages."

Runners up were Roth, Updike, McCarthy, and DeLillo.

My list has room for Auster, Amy Tan, Rushdie, Wolfe, and others. But DeLillo is my favorite.

NY Magazine on Rabbinic Abuse

2006-05-17T12:21:00.000-04:00

The article On the Rabbi's Knee: Do the Orthodox Jews have a Catholic-priest problem? is important. If you haven't the time to read it, here are some highlights. My comments in ital.

1. "The community’s views on sex were perhaps most jarring. Boys were trained never to lock eyes with a woman who wasn’t related; some were taught not to touch their genitals when they washed."
I wonder at the "lock eyes" formulation. Is that to the exclusion of glancing?

2. "Is molestation more common in the Orthodox Jewish community than it is elsewhere? There are no reliable statistics on the subject—molestation often goes unreported, even in relatively liberal communities—but there’s reason to believe the answer to that question might be yes."

3. "There are some who believe the repression in the ultra-Orthodox community can foster abuse. Sex before marriage in Hasidic life is strictly forbidden (unmarried men and women are barely allowed to look at one another), and even within marriage, sex is tightly regulated (couples aren’t allowed to have sex, for instance, during menstruation and the week after). As Winston notes, fathers can’t attend their daughters’ school plays, “as the sound of women singing can lead to uncontrollable male sexual arousal.” In a world of Paris Hilton videos and Victoria’s Secret billboards, there are few outlets for an Orthodox man with compulsions the community refuses to acknowledge even exist. The repression, some say, creates a fertile environment for deviance."
If true--and I am not sure it is--this is a really interesting point. I heard Tova Hartman make a similar point in a lecture once.

4. Other factors, according to the article, include batei dinim (Jewish courts) not being responsible, fear of lashon hara (slander), and hilul hashem (desecrating god's name).

Neusner Chair

2006-05-17T11:54:00.000-04:00

I just got a press release from Bard College about a Jacob Neusner chair that will go into effect July 1, 2006. According to the release (see here), the university received a $2 million gift for the chair.

According to Wikipedia, Neusner "has written or edited over 924 books about the Torah, Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmud, Midrash and other Jewish writings," with the caveat, "The number of books Neusner has published does not include books in series that he has edited, translations of his books into foreign languages, nor subsequent editions of his books."

Now let's think, at 2 million for 924 books, his chair got just about $2,164.5021 per book, according to my calculator.

The "Edward Said Chair Of Arab Studies" at Columbia got a reported $2.1 million (see here and here).

At 36 publications for Said (see here), Said gets $58,333.333 per book.

Doesn't seem fair for Said to get 26.95 times the money per book. I say we start a collection for Neusner...

"Humbly Going About His Work" on Jules Olitski at the Forward

2006-05-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

My newest column "Humbly Going About His Work" is online now in the recent issue of the Forward:

Jules Olitski, the subject of an exhibit opening May 10 at the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at the George Washington University, has been compared to nearly every artist in the canon — Rembrandt, Frederic Edwin Church, Picasso, Hans Hoffman, El Greco — as well as deemed the newest painting god to emerge from the stratosphere ex nihilo. It's an ironic brouhaha, mostly because the object of the parades and confetti is himself anti-art.

Photos from the front lines Photos by David Seymour at the Corcoran Gallery @ Washington Jewish Week

2006-04-16T03:05:00.000-04:00

My new article entitled "Photos from the front lines: Photos by David Seymour at the Corcoran Gallery" is online at the Washington Jewish Week here:

In David Seymour's photography, life and death are literally at stake. While covering an exchange of wounded prisoners during the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, the Polish photographer and his colleague were killed by Egyptian sniper fire that drove their jeep off the road and into the canal. Seymour was only 44 years old...

The artistic equivalent of the stock-car racer of his day, Seymour was no stranger to taking risks. Armed with his portable Leica camera that allowed for quicker photographing, Seymour revolutionized photojournalism by capturing a wide range of war scenes.

New Articles @ B'nai B'rith Magazine

2006-04-11T18:21:00.000-04:00

Three of my paintings for the new issue of BBM are online (in part) here. For the article, "Cruising The Cybershtetl: The Internet is the biggest thing since the printing press. Just ask any two Jews," which I cowrote with Richard Greenberg, look here:

The People of The Book are now also the People of The E-Book, which is to say that the Internet is refashioning the Jewscape.

So what else is new?

Nothing. And everything. To draw a historical parallel, the advent of the printing press altered life for Jews in ways that once seemed unimaginable. The same can be said for the Internet-based communications revolution that is now sweeping the world-and at warp speed.

The number of Jews affected by this phenomenon is mushrooming, and that sphere of influence can only expand as computer literacy grows. In the meantime, the point-and-click era has already produced a far-flung web of online outposts that, collectively, may portend the Jewish future. Egalitarian, interactive, cacophonous, and maddeningly self-contradictory, the cybershtetl, as we'll call it, is a cross between a yeshiva, the Tower of Babel, and a late-night call-in show on steroids.

What If Abraham Sacrificed Isaac Anyway? @ The Jewish Press

2006-04-11T10:34:00.000-04:00

My newest review, "What If Abraham Sacrificed Isaac Anyway?" is now online at the Jewish Press:

Behold! It came to pass, after those things occurred, that Abraham was tested. And he and his only son, Isaac – whom, incidentally, he loved – set out towards the mountain range of Moriah. There, they built an altar and set up the branches, and Abraham shackled Isaac. And Abraham raised his arm – wholly ready to plunge the blade through his son’s throat to offer him as a sacrifice to G-d. Everyone knows the rest of the story; now is the part where the angel stops Abraham and says, effectively, "G-d was just testing you. Let Isaac live and have Jacob, etc." But what if Abraham surprised us all by choosing to carry out the deed in spite of the interruption?

In playwright Motti Lerner’s world, the Biblical story unfolds with a murder-sacrifice, but Lerner’s tale maps the Biblical sacrifice across the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin (the Biblical Isaac’s namesake).

Soda Bottle Sandals And Post-Library Shelving @ The Jewish Press

2006-03-29T16:08:00.000-05:00

My newest article at the Jewish Press "Soda Bottle Sandals And Post-Library Shelving" is online here:

The "Solos" body of work consists of design objects that are useless, and yet they demand to be accepted as art. This temperament is in no way endemic to Israel; it is a mode of curating and art making that is all the rage in contemporary museums of every sort. But the show is interesting simply for Tarazi’s photomontage alone, which uses the moving slideshow form to show the many faces of Israel form Bedouins to Palestinians to Jews, and from backgammon to bottle cap sandals.

People Of The Book, People Of The Text: The Harry G. Friedman Society And Jewish Books @ The JPress

2006-03-17T16:11:00.000-05:00

My newest column at the Jewish Press entitled "People Of The Book, People Of The Text: The Harry G. Friedman Society And Jewish Books" is online here"

Jewish scribes paid careful attention to the surfaces upon which they wrote – to the ink, typography, composition and design elements. They created particularized title pages that carried their own unique aesthetic, from naming the censor to highlighting the word "book" and the printing location in larger type. These decisions suggest a body of Jewish book art that is certainly worthy of study and celebration.

Visualizing Jewish Hair: Samson And The Sotah @ JPress

2006-03-05T23:39:00.000-05:00

My newest article, "Visualizing Jewish Hair: Samson And The Sotah" is online at the Jewish Press website here:

Hair in Judaism carries multiple connotations. It is distracting and narcissistic, as when Joseph "plays with his hair" too much and finds his jail sentence under Potifar extended for his vanity. It is a source of shame, as when the 42 young boys mock the prophet Elijah, saying: "Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head," and Elijah dispatches two bears to eat them. Hair can be a practical liability, as when Absalom gets stuck in an oak tree hanging by his hair and becomes a defenseless piñata of sorts for Joab’s army. And hair can prove a strategic guise, as when Jacob adorns his arms to mimic Esau’s hairy skin in a ploy to "steal" the birthright.

But most basically, hair in Judaism implies two things, power and seduction. They might best be typified by the models of Samson and the sotah (a woman accused of adultery). Samson’s hair is plainly visible to the public as the symbol of his power, while the priest (at her show trial) uncovers the hair of the sotah to signify her powerlessness.

An Exhibit That Couldn't Be More Timely @ The Forward

2006-02-16T00:04:00.000-05:00

My newest column, "An Exhibit That Couldn't Be More Timely" about Mark Podwal's drawings is online at the Forward here:

The loose energy and gutsy temperament of "Israeli Tank," Mark Podwal's nine-barreled tank (menorah), typify his larger repertoire. Podwal, who has drawn an estimated 200 times for The New York Times since 1972, submitted his tank to the op-ed page in 1982. The art director loved it; the editor cut it last minute, calling it too inflammatory. Like a phoenix, the drawing re-emerged. It ran with Abba Eban's 1989 op-ed, "Israel, Hardly the Monaco of the Middle East" (same art director, different editor), winning the Society for News Design Award of Excellence — a rarity for The Times.

Zionist Art Nouveau: Ideal Or Idealistic? @ JPress

2006-02-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

My newest Jewish Press column, "Zionist Art Nouveau: Ideal Or Idealistic?" is online.

It’s just about the last thing you’d suspect of relevance and contribution to anything culturally meaningful. Its size is unexceptional, and the tiny exhibit in which it resides, occupies a pair of glass cases of the Kiev Collection at the seventh floor of the George Washington University Gelman Library. But Ephraim Moses Lilien’s (1874 -1925) etching of a man dressed in Babylonian garb with a Renaissance halo about his head – all set in a dreamy, Art Nouveau backdrop with glittering stars and volcanoes that evoke "spaghetti" – is, alone, well worth the trip. Sounds like a pointless artsy gimmick? Consider that the portrayed man is the Budapest-born Zionism futurist, Theodor Herzl, and that Herzl is boldly – even profanely – cast as Moses with the tablets in his hands, and suddenly the piece emerges as one of the most provocative gems of Jewish art.

Beating Swords Into Photographs @ the Forward

2006-02-09T00:02:00.000-05:00

My newest column at the Forward, a review of David Seymour's (Chim) photographs to appear at the Corcoran, is online here:

David Seymour's photograph "Wedding in the Border Regions" (1952) has something of the prophet Micah in it. The picture doesn't beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruninghooks, but it does sculpt a chupah of pitchforks and rifles. This move of combining the sacred and the profane captures a fundamental aesthetic of the Israeli settlers. But Seymour's photography — the subject of a March exhibition at Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art — revolutionized the art through its formal components far more than through its content.

Imagining and Imaging @ the JPress

2006-02-01T14:44:00.000-05:00

My new Jewish Press column, "Imagining And Imaging" about Dara Horn's new book, The World to Come, is online here:

As praying Jews, we declare our belief in the afterlife on a daily basis. We invoke the messianic age early and often, and we anticipate a redemptive era which will ingather us all to the Holy Land in a peaceful environment. But is declaration enough? Surely we must accompany it with actions — with proofs to ourselves, to our peers and to God that we truly yearn for salvation. Those deeds are imperative; we are people of good and kind actions. But do we really fulfill our obligation for yearning for the world to come if we don’t speculate what color it is? What it smells like? What it looks like?

Coincidentally Israeli Designers, New Forward Column

2006-01-19T10:03:00.000-05:00

My newest column at the Forward, entitled "Coincidentally Israeli Designers" is online here:

To classify art based on geographical origin is to play a silly game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. The Guggenheim exhibit The Aztec Empire recently showed the dangers of national taxonomies by including works of the Toltecs — whom the Aztecs sacrificed to their gods — and of the Olmecs, who are to the Aztecs what the Druids are to contemporary Britain. Even in areas that have enjoyed regional art historically, modern travel and globalization have created internationalist styles that fall back on generalizations. Defining an Israeli art — especially given the controversy surrounding the term Israeli — proves particularly confounding, which makes the Cooper-Hewitt museum's exhibit, SOLOS: New Design From Israel, all the more peculiar. The show of 18 artists who taught or studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem successfully argues for locally important design works while failing to outline any Israeli identity therein.

New Jewish Press Column

2006-01-18T16:18:00.000-05:00

My next column at the Jewish Press, entitled "Accepting A Fateless Fate: A Holocaust Film To End All Holocaust Films" is online here:

Like Daumier's pitiful, lonely, sickly man looking up to the moon for inspiration, the camp inmates look to the clouds and the moon for inspiration, for a dream to cling on to. So powerfully does Gyuri cling to that moon, that he manages — however astonishingly — to call it happiness, even when he leaves the camps and begins to reclaim his freedom. This artistic move, in one respect, critiques other artistic efforts to turn the Holocaust into a symbol. But in a far more interesting way, Fateless raises important questions by exploring a fate that is "fateless" and a name that is "unnameable". It is not a contradiction. It is a powerful drive to explore the Holocaust in artistic form while trying, at all costs, to avoid an inherent minefield of superficially pious messages that have clung tenaciously to the perennial question of Holocaust art.

New Jewish Press Column on Cantorial Music

2006-01-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

My new JPress column, entitled "Pastrami And Dodgers-Flavored Chazzanut: Jackie Mendelson's Cantorial Tale" is online here:

If the hills are alive with the sound of Julie Andrews' music, then Cantor Jacob "Jackie" Mendelson would have viewers believe that Brooklyn is once again to be alive with the sound of Chazzanut.

Mendelson — championing the unlikely banner "Chazzanut is in the air" — sings duets with butchers, bakers and just about anyone else (albeit no candlestick makers) who, if not willing, is at least receptive to being bullied into a take of the High Holiday "Hineni" or "Sheyibaneh Beis Hamikdash."

New JPress Column on Jewish Space

2005-12-21T16:33:00.000-05:00

My new Jewish Press column on "Jewish Space: Inside The Ark; And The Diary Of Anne Frank" is online here:

This insanity that comes from being indoors dominates the set of "The Ark." Although the Midrash recounts tales of lions biting Noah when he fails to feed them in a timely fashion, readers often forget that Noah and company were in a self-contained boat for a long time, plagued by boredom, awful stenches and claustrophobia. And yet in the end, Noah`s family is able to find spirituality and common ground in the ark. Like Jonah who sits in the whale`s belly and finds himself through prayer and repentance, both Noah and his family on the one hand, and Anne Frank on the other, find a way to transcend the spaces they occupy.

That notion of transcendent yet particular space is a Jewish one. We are instructed to build a sukkah, and we must occupy it. The sukkah is a physical object, and yet it is much larger than the space it occupies. By transcending the space, the space becomes inclusive and expansive, rather than being a physical boundary, and that manner of using the physical without allowing it to tie one down, represents one of the most important commandments of the Torah. And, incidentally, one of the highest goals of Jewish Art.

Alternative Medicine

2005-12-13T18:07:00.000-05:00

My new article on alternative medicine is on the B'nai B'rith Magazine website here, entitled "A SECOND OPINION: Amid controversy, alternative medicine flourishes.":

Some of us do crossword puzzles to stay smart and self-prescribe Jewish penicillin to keep the doctor away. Increasingly, others forgo the chicken soup and ditch the pencil in favor of more exotic—and usually more expensive—remedies like gilkgo biloba and echinacea. Why the stampede to the herbal aisle, and is it worth it?

My Column on Myla Goldberg @ the Jewish Press

2005-12-07T16:13:00.000-05:00

My most recent Jewish Press column, "Kabbalah Sting — Towards A Jewish American Linguistics" is posted here:

Myla Goldberg`s "Bee Season" joins the works of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow as one of the Great Jewish-American Novels. Goldberg`s spin on the American Jewish experience locates a tale of 11-year-old Eliza Naumann within the complicated collapse of her middle-American family. Eliza`s rise to stardom through her triumphant spelling contests relates inversely to the family`s failure. Eliza`s older brother, Aaron, joins a Buddhist community, much to the shock of his father, Saul, a Jewish professor- type, with a knack for kabbalah and Jewish philology. But Saul hardly has time to notice his son fleeing from his faith or the decline in his relationship with his daughter. After all, he is too busy focusing on the ever-developing gap between him and his wife, Miriam, who takes one of his kabbalistic rants on tikkun olam too far and lands herself in jail and then an asylum for a peculiar form of burglary.

The move of infusing a spelling bee set with kabbalistic tones is a remarkable one...Like Webster`s nationalistic and political interest in unifying American language, bees are as American a competition as football or Fourth of July barbeques.

My Next Jewish Press Column: Jewish Prague

2005-11-30T14:46:00.000-05:00

My newest column at the Jewish Press, "Silence And Magic: Prague In Jewish Art" is online here:

But Prague is also about magic — the sort that bred the Golem. Mark Podwal`s "Mystical Prague Hamsa Bookmark" in the museum shop (which joins his "Prague Hebrew Amulet Pendant" and "Mystical Prague Hamsa Pin") seeks to capture the magic of the Jewish Prague community. Podwal`s hamsas incorporate the Hebrew alphabet, and the pin uses the hamsa hand to play off the pattern of the Prague streets and synagogues."
But what is truly fascinating about Podwal`s pieces, the kiddush cups, tomb stones and manuscripts is also straight out of Myla Goldberg. "Visiting a famous grave is an odd thing: not only is there no guarantee the dead had any hand in designing their gravestone, but in visiting a famous grave it is possible that one is visiting a place the famous person in question never actually saw. But cemeteries have a special relationship with time. For the interred, time has been truly eliminated; the marker above their graves documents the exact moment when, for them, time stopped." The viewer who engages the Jewish Prague pieces at the Metropolitan Museum distinctly feels that the images of the dead still live on. Jewish Prague of the 14th century represents the fusion of silence and magic. Perhaps this traumatic and awesome experience of the dead contributes to the reason we wash our hands after visiting a cemetery, and that experience permeates the Prague show as well.

Art Joyeux: The Art Of Enia Propp

2005-11-09T17:30:00.000-05:00

My new Jewish Press column, entitled "Art Joyeux: The Art Of Enia Propp" is online here:

Some art defies criticism. Criticism — after all — is all about words, and some pieces of art stubbornly refuse to be held down and given names. Criticism has an air about it like butterfly collections: it pins its specimens to the wall, pastes incomprehensible (to most of us) Latin names on cards beneath them, and calls the dead array of carcasses imperative, even beautiful.

Reviewing Enia Propp`s art thus contains a sort of contradiction in terms. In response to questions about meaning in her work, Enia smiles and says, "It is just fun." It is certainly hard to deny that to an 83-year-old artist who places orange rubber cones on the stone duck figurines at the entrance to her driveway, builds elaborate, colorful structures to adorn the trees on her front lawn, and always saves plastic platters from the kiddushim following Shabbat services at the Westchester Day School "for my art." The most natural critical test might just be to show Enia`s sculptures and assemblages to children and to ask them to evaluate the pieces. They would be delighted.

Go, Go, Go `O Ye Joseph: Biblical Poems On Joseph And Others

2005-10-24T17:13:00.000-04:00

My new Jewish Press column, entitled "Go, Go, Go `O Ye Joseph: Biblical Poems On Joseph And Others" is now online here:

Yakov Azriel`s Threads from a Coat of Many Colors can be compared to oodles of writers` works. When it is good, it embodies a transparency of language that almost approaches Nietzsche`s Thus Spake Zarathustra, which explores the philosophical underpinnings of the Ubermensch — the Superman — in highly stylized, poetic form. When Azriel`s writing is tight, he resorts to a surreal vocabulary in which he illustrates bizarre images in deadpan language making the reader accept them despite their implausibility. He then might pass as a student of Israeli novelist David Grossman, whom I hold as one of the greatest contemporary Jewish writers.

But to say that Azriel is not on par with Nietzsche and Grossman is not to unleash undue criticism upon him. Neither is he Shakespeare nor Blake nor Milton. Some parts of "Threads" could have done with some editing down, but in the places where it is good, it might very well be one of the gutsiest and most ambitious forms of Biblical exploration I have ever seen.

The title image, which derives from the multi-colored coat Jacob made for Joseph, surfaces in the poem, "Tell me, Where is My Fruit." In the poem, Jacob seeks answers for his pain surrounding his daughter Dina`s rape, his wife Rachel`s premature death, and his son Joseph, whom he believes to have died. "You knew my daughter — why was she left in the field/unguarded?/You knew my wife — when I lowered her into her grave,/Did G-d accompany her?/You knew my son — so tell me,/ What kind of blessing is a coat of many colors/Stained blood red,/Clawed by Wildcats?"

Thoughts?

Jacob van Ruisdael is not Jewish

2005-10-20T08:19:00.000-04:00

My recent review of the van Ruisdael show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is online at the Forward. It requires a login (and I recommend everyone do that), but here is the text below.

Jacob van Ruisdael Is Not Jewish
ART
By Menachem Wecker
October 21, 2005

'Sir, I think you are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp in trying to find a firm connection," Seymour Slive told me over the phone from his Maine summer home. At 85, Slive is Gleason professor of fine arts emeritus at Harvard University, former director of the Harvard Art Museums, and the Ruisdael scholar — with a collection of books and articles to prove it several times over. His recent catalog, "Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape" (Yale University Press), accompanies the new Ruisdael exhibit, opening October 23 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Slive's will-o'-the-wisp line quashed my mission to find a Jewish angle on Ruisdael, though he granted that I might tell the opposite story: "It seems so blatant that there is a firm connection, but, dear reader, that isn't the case."

After all the mother 17th-century Dutch landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682) — Maycken Cornelisdr of Haarlem, Holland — was not Jewish, nor were Jacob's father, Isaack; Isaack's father, Jacob Jansz de Goyer; nor anyone else, frankly, from the de Goyer family. Not only was de Goyer gentile, but he and his son Salomon de Goyer (Isaack's brother) were Mennonites, as well. Ruisdael himself was baptized June 14, 1657, at the Calvinist Reformed Church in Amsterdam.

To this backdrop, I embarrassedly told Slive that I had mistaken Ruisdael for a Jew, citing as pretexts Ruisdael's two versions of the painting "The Jewish Cemetery" and the very biblical names in the Ruisdael and de Goyer families. "Sir, there is a gentleman called Abraham Lincoln," he said, "and one named Samuel Adams." Besides, Ruisdael's Jewish cemetery paintings are merely two of more than 700, Slive informed me; his book, "Jacob van Ruisdael" (Abbeville Press, 1981), further argues, "Simply nothing is known about [Jacob's] thoughts or attitudes toward the Jews before or after his conversion."

Slive kindly assured me, though, that I am not alone; people have often insisted to him that Ruisdael was a Jew. "I can't take it," he said, "maybe I am stupid."

Perhaps the many who seek to claim Ruisdael as a Jew project Rembrandt's close connection with the Netherlands' Jewish community onto Ruisdael. There is an essay titled "A Different Jerusalem: The Jews in Rembrandt's Amsterdam" in the catalog for the Judaic Museum of the JCC of Greater Washington's 1981 show, "The Jews in the Age of Rembrandt." In this work, Simon M. Schama writes: "In the Dutch mind, then, there was no continuity between the Jews of the Book and the Jews of the Street. Rembrandt was singular in his imaginative ability to link the two." Rembrandt's ability to ground his biblical portraits in the contemporary Jewish Dutch community serves as a microcosm for the whole JCC show, and permeates the wide array of Rembrandt's biblical artwork.

Although he would not necessarily accept Schama's terms, Slive agrees that Rembrandt's relationship with Dutch Jews "was something very special" and certainly atypical. This was an estimation that his student, Boston University professor Michael Zell, corroborated in a phone interview. Zell's "Reframing Rembrandt: Jews and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-century Amsterdam" (University of California Press, 2002) argues for a "theologically significant transformation" in Rembrandt's biblical paintings, which derives from "Rembrandt's involvement with the Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), the foremost Jewish apologist of the 17th century."

This kind of collaboration could occur in 17th-century Holland, which Touro College professor Miriam Bodian has noted as having offered a comfortable place for Jews. According to Bodian's "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam," (Indiana University Press, 1997): "[W]hatever the Dutch thought of rabbinic Judaism, they did not demonize the Jews as peoples elsewhere in Europe did." This honesty permeated Dutch art, as well: "In the many paintings and engravings in which Jews figure — Rembrandt's are the best known — they appear altogether human, their ceremonies exotic, but dignified."

But even if Rembrandt had a connection to Dutch Jews, Zell was quick to caution against overstating Rembrandt's Jewish connection. "It is unlikely that Dutch painters had much contact with Jewish patronage," he said. Rembrandt's relationship with ben Israel is thus all the more remarkable. Rembrandt illustrated several of ben Israel's publications — mostly flavored with messianic hopes and interfaith apologetics — and ben Israel's biblical interpretations often surfaced in Rembrandt's work.

One example that Zell cited to me is Rembrandt's "Belshazzar's Feast" (1630s), in which Rembrandt paints the writing on the wall, "Mene Mene Tekel Ufarsin," in Hebrew letters that proceed from top to bottom rather than along a horizontal line. This decision follows ben Israel's interpretation of the Belshazzar story. However, Zell underscores Rembrandt's misspelling, substituting a zayen for a nun.

Rembrandt's typographical errors extend to his painting of Moses with the Ten Commandments, in which he forgets a preposition (a letter bet) altogether. If this error indicates a lack of client literacy (probably gentile), Ruisdael's "The Jewish Cemetery" (1655/60) likely was not intended for a Jewish clientele either (pseudo-Hebrew is written on the gravestones).

The two versions that Ruisdael painted of "The Jewish Cemetery" were the Detroit version and the Dresden version (named for their current locations). Both paintings — which are based on the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, called Beth Haim — show tombs from the Jewish cemetery in the foreground. Cathedral ruins loom behind, all encircled by heavy foliage, a flowing brook and a dramatic sky. Slive regards the two paintings as "among the rare landscapes by the artist that were painted with a deliberate allegorical intent." He considers this an allusion to the "transience of all life and the ultimate futility of humankind's endeavors." If this all sounds very fatalistic and depressing for such beautifully rendered paintings, Slive calls it a "common theme in 17th-century Dutch art." He notes that the light and rainbow breaking through the clouds hint at renewed hope.

Slive maintains that a Jewish client did not commission the cemetery paintings, and Zell agrees. "The paintings were once thought to have been commissioned by a Sephardi patron," Zell said. "But the imaginary settings, one with ruins of a Catholic abbey, and the tombs' illegible, pseudo-Hebraic inscriptions establish that the pictures were not conceived for a Jewish collector." Whereas some historians see the paintings as a critique of the outward lavishness of the Jewish community in the expensive marble tombs — Samuel van Hoogstraten compares them to Jesus' denouncing the Pharisees as "hypocrites" — Slive sees the statement as a generalized meditation on pride and on the vulnerability of life, rather than as a comment directed particularly at the Jewish community.

But perhaps most importantly, Ruisdael's "The Jewish Cemetery" is inaccurate. The grounds of the Beth Haim cemetery are flat where Ruisdael invented hills; no stream rushes through the landscape, and Ruisdael added the ruins based on the Castle of Egmond, which is hardly visible from the region.

Slive argues that Ruisdael's "genius is that he is not an ape of nature.... The subjects he depicted most were Scandinavian waterfalls, but he never went to Scandinavia." This Dutch imagination for landscape is perhaps what drives Slive's interest. "When a Dutchman sees a dune 200 feet high," he said, "it can become an alp."

That Dutch transformative and imaginative temperament achieved a form of sham in its departure from nature, yet it fostered an environment in which the Dutch artists painted Jewish subjects realistically and honestly. Therefore, Ruisdael might be the first creative nonfiction painter. And his paintings of dunes-as-alps must be taken in conjunction with Rembrandt's own paintings, which find strikingly imperative truth — even the sort embedded in the imagination.

Menachem Wecker is a painter and writer on Jewish arts, residing in Washington, D.C.

New Jewish Press Column: The Barbara Mendes Gallery

2005-10-12T07:54:00.000-04:00

My new Jewish Press column, "Bright Colors, Cloudy Tales The Barbara Mendes Gallery" is online at the JPress site, here:

Los Angeles-based painter Barbara Mendes` work can best be compared to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo`s work, with more of an optimistic temperament. Kahlo — the wife of renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera — revolutionized Mexican art as a woman and as a painter (and as a Jewess, according to a recent exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York), and her work integrated a vast system of iconographical symbols and edgy political views. An accident left Kahlo paralyzed, and even after she regained much of her movement, her paintings, post-accident, all focused on the artist`s broken spine, surrounded by a frightening array of blood, tears and pain. Kahlo found perfect voice for her painful artwork in the surrealist tradition — a movement founded by Salvador Dali and others that used an array of symbols, most notably the melting clock, to metaphorically tell of a melting, uncertain reality.

Mendes` work recalls Kahlo`s in style — it creates its own language of symbols, as it were — but where Kahlo`s work speaks of pain and evil and depression, Mendes` more closely resembles a Crayola set of neon crayons for children. "Children like my paintings," Mendes says. "Old people like my paintings. People people like my paintings — all the receptionists and secretaries of all the important people I`ve tried to get through to. If you consider yourself totally, totally educated — to the max — you may not be my audience."

But Mendes` audience must be educated, with an openness to work that is very unabashed in its devotion to Jewish texts and to an aesthetic tradition of iconography that draws from Latin American and Indian miniature work, with its intricate detail and metaphorical symbols.

Thoughts?

Danny's UWS Request

2005-10-10T00:37:00.000-04:00

My friend Danny has posted a request on a blog he co-writes for called Several Fine Fellows. The request is interesting, and it questions the sincerity and altruism of the Orthodox, Jewish community. It's worth looking through, whether you do anything with it or not. It resides here, and it's called quest for the upper west:

I began a sort of sociological experiment this evening to find out if an ordinary Jew can practically depend on the kindness of strangers....
I am left to wonder if these kind acts are truly motivated by absolute altruism? Based on what I explained above [cropped], the only reason that person is so quick to assist is because he or she has a common link to me, the person in dire need of aid. Would he or she have been so willing to help me otherwise? What if I was just another Jew, someone this person had never, or never would again, come across? Is it possible for an outsider to break into the system that seems to govern our social, and at times professional, lives? That's what I plan to find out.

Thoughts?

"The Last Five Years" #2

2005-10-08T21:26:00.000-04:00

My second piece on "The Last Five Years" is in this week's issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times. To the best of my knowledge, it is not online.

Jason Robert Brown's "The Last Five Years" @ Everyman Theatre

2005-10-05T22:44:00.000-04:00

Here is my review of Jason Robert Brown's "The Last Five Years" at the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, at the Baltimore Chronicle. Click here:

Everyman Theatre’s season-opening play, Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years,” contains a bit of Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog’s Day”—but instead of a random planetary misalignment replaying a single day in a weatherman’s life ad infinitum, the script tells of Schmuel, a tailor for whom time runs in reverse...

Josh Davis (Jamie) sings the Schmuel tale in an appropriate mama-lashon yiddishe accent to his wife Betsy Morgan (Cathy) on the second Christmas after their marriage. That Jamie sings a shtetl bubbameiseh to Cathy on Christmas ought not to surprise the audience, as Jamie, well before unleashing Schmuel, had already removed his Santa cap to reveal a white kippa and sung “Shiksa Goddess” to his Catholic wife. He concludes the Schmuel tale, singing “If Schmuel had been a cute Goyisha maid, he’d’ve looked a lot like you.”

The set design recreates New York City (where else?), the interfaith couple’s tramping ground, with a taxi stand and knockoffs of Massimo Vignelli’s subway signs. Broadway, Times Square and Houston Street complete the set, an organized mess like the “Rent” set. But this performance of “The Last Five Years” definitely had more Astor Place pumping through its veins than Broadway; the singing and the acting had far too much avant-garde energy to be Midtown.

Thoughts?

Finding Shicoff: Opera Meets Music Video @ the Jewish Press

2005-09-30T00:18:00.000-04:00

My new Jewish Press article, "Finding Shicoff: Opera Meets Music Video" is online here:

But Neil Shicoff is no regular opera singer, and the conditions of his appearance in the documentary music video, "Finding Eleazar," are nothing short of remarkable. "Finding Eleazar" is an archeological venture, tracking Shicoff`s revival of "La Juive" (The Jewess) a 19th Century opera by Fromental Halevy about religious intolerance in general, particularly anti-Semitism.

Shicoff — a Brooklynite who counts his father, the renowned Cantor Sidney Shicoff as his most significant inspiration — somehow still heard a pulse in Halevy`s opera which the Nazis banned as degenerate art. The opera has been all but discarded for over six and a half decades, though it was performed over 500 times in Paris alone, prior to World War II. Shicoff revived the opera almost single handedly and courageously performed it in a traditional hub of anti-Semitism: Vienna.

Finding Eleazar: A Feature Documentary
Starring Neil Shicoff
Produced and Directed by Paula Heil Fisher
Millennial Arts Production: 78 Minutes
Opened September 16, 2005
at Quad Cinema
34 W 13th Street
(Between 5th and 6th Avenues)

A Language of Blame

2005-09-14T20:12:00.000-04:00

My new Jewish Press column, "A Language Of Blame — Antony Sher As Primo" is now online here.
Here is a selection:

And ultimately, the opportunity to read Sher`s memoir about portraying Levi, and to then compare it with Primo Levi`s own account of Auschwitz, though a venture in different levels of hearsay, proves so completely moving in its sheer power, that the reader/viewer him/herself manages to internalize and personalize the tragic message in his/her own way. And this, after all, is one of the most powerful effects art can realize — especially art about Auschwitz.

Red Sox and Pats

2005-09-08T18:34:00.000-04:00

Red Sox and Patriots tonight. No time for art...

Cezanne and Pissarro Chevrusah

2005-09-07T12:33:00.000-04:00

My new article, "Impressionist Chevruta: Cézanne And Pissarro At The MoMA" is now online at the Jewish Press, here:

Imagine the great sages Hillel and Shamai enjoying a chevruta. Hillel would bring his soft, merciful touch to the table — the trait he exhibited when happily explaining the meaning of the Torah while standing on one foot to the impatient, simple inquirer: love your neighbor as yourself. Shamai would contribute his rigid, conservative no-nonsense ideology to the duo, just as he adamantly threw said inquirer clear out of the study hall for his insolence. Sometimes, the best chevrutas operate on the principle that opposites attract.
The chevruta, as it were, between Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro is not quite like Hillel`s and Shamai`s to be sure; Hillel and Shamai would be engrossed in Torah discussion, while the two painters would have spoken in French about form and color and line, but the comparison is not wholly bankrupt.
...And surely, though Cézanne and Pissarro would hardly agree to these terms, the exhibit is an exercise in makhloket. Pissarro and Cézanne found enough common ground in their relationship to paint together, though their paintings so differed. Each found a way of responding to the landscape, and like the 70 avenues of interpretation in halakha, both were valid.

Guggenheim and Ernst Review at the Commentator

2005-08-30T23:18:00.000-04:00

My review, "Mercedes Ruehl's Peggy Guggenheim: Very Provocative, Very Jewish" at the Commentator is online here. If it requires a login, use wecker@yu.edu if you do not want to sign up:

When Peggy Guggenheim the kvetch and the art aficionado emerge, so does Peggy Guggenheim the Jew...
"We Jews understand [modern art] because wherever we are, wherever we go, we're always forced to always be outsiders. And because of that we see this art for what it is: not an answer, but a question. It's why Hitler wanted to destroy it all," Ruehl said...
In fact, many of the gentiles of the avant-garde found themselves unwittingly circumcised. One of Guggenheim's two ex-husbands, painter Max Ernst (she was one of his many ex-wives), suffered misdirected anti-Semitism. As Ruehl puts it, "Max was in a French concentration camp and I got him away from the Nazis. It cost me a bundle, but hey! He was an artist! A great artist! Max was actually on Hitler's list: modern, decadent, Jewish art and artists to be destroyed. He wasn't even Jewish, poor slob."

Jewish (Russian) Ballet

2005-08-24T11:57:00.000-04:00

My next review, entitled "Jewish (Russian) Ballet" is online at the Jewish Press here:

The alignment of all the players in this story is all too perfect: the Bolshoi Ballet — of which Plisetskaya was the prima ballerina — performing "Pharaoh`s Daughter" at the Metropolitan Opera, that houses Chagall`s murals in which Plisetskaya is featured. If the Jewish world is small and forever shrinking, Jewish geography within the Jewish artistic community seems one step ahead of the curve.
...And that is one of the trademarks of the Bolshoi, which means "big" in Russian. The name derives more from the number of dancers than their size, but many of the male dancers are quite large and powerful — which they have to be, to execute many of their ambitious dance steps. They move like Chagall portraits — much more gracefully than you`d expect from just looking at them. Not only did Plisetskaya soar where the Stalin regime tried to hold her down, she was able to float higher, it seems, precisely because of its attempts to impose an artificial gravity on her.

New NY Arts Magazine Article

2005-08-24T00:20:00.000-04:00

My newest article at NY Arts Magazine is online here, entitled "Girl #39." It is a review of the show "Girls on Film" at Harvard’s Sert Gallery.
The exhibit explores seventy photographs of

"China girls," or "color-timing strips": models who posed in film processing labs to help test color balance and tonal density in a film. They are all anonymous, save the artists’ own occasional images slipped into the repertoire in a postmodern tease.
...The show lives somewhere between art and research, though Segal called it "an artistic work."
...But the ultimate curatorial move is anti-historical. Segal conceded to knowing quite a bit about the girls’ history, though the information was excluded "because we want the viewer to react emotionally and visually to the images, without framing the images in a historical context."

Waldsee at Hebrew Union College

2005-08-19T00:53:00.000-04:00

My review of Waldsee at Hebrew Union College is online at the NY Press here.

Getting Emotional at ICA

2005-08-19T00:47:00.000-04:00

My review of the show "Getting Emotional" at the ICA Boston, is now online in NY Arts Magazine.

News

2005-08-12T00:47:00.000-04:00

I have several articles to appear in a few different venues soon. Will link them when they arrive.

New Jewish Press Column: Jackie Mason

2005-08-10T11:10:00.000-04:00

My newest Jewish Press column on Jackie Mason and Hal Holbrook is online here. Here is a selection:

This integrated model permeates Mason`s act as well. Like Charlie Chaplin losing the Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest he secretly entered (reportedly, he did not even make finalist), Mason is so appealing because he cannot really parody himself. He goes on telling his jokes to theaters full of old Jews — the average age in the theater would have left Methuselah staggering — with a bow to changes in times only in his subject material: Martha Stewart, Atkins diets, the President and Senator Kerry (prefaced by a disclaimer that there will be no discussion of politics during the show)...
This Mason, revisiting Mason from a time past, who once revisited himself, imports Tosefot arguing with Rashi`s interpretation of one possible explanation of the Gemara`s understanding of the mishna perfectly into a theater setting. Rabbi Mason (he attended MTJ) would shake his head and gripe, "Menachem, this you call an article? Not even the Gentiles will know what to make of it," and I know that means he is proud.

Thoughts?

Mimaamakim

2005-07-31T00:17:00.000-04:00

I am posting on Mimaamakim for the time being.

Michael Dubitzky Sports Blog

2005-07-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

My good friend Michael has a new Sports blog here. It will be a good one, and I encourage all interested in sports to check it out.