Arts & Culture
The products of the Yiddish greeting-card industry are a reminder of how wonderfully varied was the world of Yiddish-speaking Jewry.
A City and Its Fullness.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Dmitri Shostakovich.
A comedian who embodied a Jewish stereotype from which the sting of prejudice had been leached.
If Judaism’s idea of art is one that can truly represent our frail, fallible humanity, then Rembrandt, who captured faces “without any attempt to beautify them,” is the artist for Jews.
The Rachel Corrie revival.
Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik’s faith in a Zionist-led Hebrew renaissance never faltered; nor did his labors on its behalf. Yet he also became, so he felt, Zionism’s prisoner.
Poems take up nearly one fifth of many al-Qaeda magazines.
Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik was called upon by his contemporaries to play the role of a prophet. By consenting, he believed he had betrayed both his talent and his true calling.
In December 1903, Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik burst to fame and notoriety in a storm of rage at Jewish passivity; by 1910, his poetic career had stalled.
A moral virtuoso.
The tools of religion can help; but, like the tools of science, they can also harm.
The nutty professor’s inner Gentile.
From Islamic manuscripts to Quaker bonnets to Torah scrolls.