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Kupferstein’s Collection Mr. Tibor Kupferstein has a dream.  He would like to create the first Jewish Art Museum in Brooklyn.  It doesn’t seem too farfetched considering that the borough hosts the largest concentration of Jews in the New York metropolitan area.  And yet making his…
Anette Pier and Michael Hafftka at YUM Two deeply idiosyncratic exhibitions at Yeshiva University Museum warrant close inspection if only to show how the diverse richness of biblical and Judaic subject matter can inspire contemporary artists.  The very eclectic nature of both artist’s works speaks…
Way to Heaven by Juan Mayorga An unshaven man stumbles on stage, clad in a raincoat covering his pajamas.  He is barefoot and shuffles among the dried leaves that litter the stage area, a long rectangle set between the audience on either side.  It is…
A Movie by Jean-Marie Straub & Daniele Huillet (1975) How can the artist presume to make art when every stroke, every effort at creating an intelligible and beautiful object, might be construed as an affront to the wholeness and perfection of God and His handiwork. …
Knesset Menorah by Benno Elkan Knesset Menorah, 1956, cast bronze by Benno Elkan, Jerusalem, Israel While the heart of Israel’s democracy is to be found in the Knesset in Jerusalem, just across the road is a quiet but persuasive work of art that sums up the…
Mystical Storytelling at MOBIA: Chagall and the Russian Jewish Theater at Jewish Museum In 1931 Marc Chagall embarked on a series of etchings of the Bible that would become a pervasive creative theme for the rest of his life.  For all of his forays into…
Memory Paintings Shmuel the artist is what they called him back in the Old Country.  At home and in cheder he was always drawing or modeling something.  Born in 1882 in Wolkovisk, Russia he grew up in poverty, his father a Torah scholar and mother…
Ben Schachter’s Eruv Maps In the world of art and culture the rabbis generally get a bad rap.  From time immemorial they have often been thought of as the prototypical zealous guardians, seen as prohibiting all sorts of imagery with righteous abandon, constantly erecting walls…
Envisioning Maps God commands Ezekiel to make a map; “take a brick and put it in front of you, and incise on it a city, Jerusalem.  Set up a siege against it… This shall be an omen for the House of Israel” (Ezekiel 4:1-3). This…
Arbit Blatas: Centennial Tribute Barbarism cannot triumph.  This is what we believe, as Jews and as Americans.  And yet it did a mere seventy years ago in the very heart of what was considered the cultural capital of Europe, Germany and Austria.  The rich cultural…
Paintings at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art The Akeidah casts a very long shadow in the lives of all Jews, every day and particularly at this time of year.  The terrifying narrative in Genesis 22, only 19 lines long, and yet recited every morning…
Michelangelo and the Jews: Part II The Sistine Secrets by Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner raises many intriguing issues about one of the most important works of Western art and its creator, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) as first presented in my review of August 29th.   Now…

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