Garden of Eden Exhibit Takes Artists Back to Where it all Began

THE WASHINGTON POST

By Chris Herlinger | Religion News Service

"Gowanus" (2013) by Alexis Rockman

NEW YORK---Environmental themes are particularly prominent in “Back to Eden: Contemporary Artists Wander the Garden,” which is on view at the museum through Sept. 28. The nearly two dozen pieces on display include paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and installations containing video elements. Of particular interest to the environmentally minded, and those who like large-scale paintings, is Alexis Rockman’s striking and dystopian “Gowanus,” a 2013 work depicting the Gowanus Canal, a long-polluted Brooklyn site that, as museum notes describe it, is notorious among New Yorkers as a “toxic wasteland” reflecting “the disastrous potential for the destruction of nature” by humanity. [link]

Museum of Biblical Art: “Back to Eden: Contemporary Artists Wander the Garden,” (Ends Sept. 28); 1865 Broadway at 61st Street, NYC; mobia.org

Read More

The Forgotten Jewish Painter, Salomon Adler

JEWISH JOURNAL 
By Milad Doroudian

Self-portrait of the German painter Salomon Adler (1630-1709). Exposed in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts

GERMANY---[Salomon] Adler lived in a period when Judaism in Europe was still clinging to rigid lines of conservatism. Most Jews held on to the idea that any art or imagery not related to the Tanakh was idolatrous and prohibited by the Second Commandment. As a result of this many Jews did not publicly dwell in the arts, in fear of angering their communities. Adler was one of the first secular Jewish artists to have opened the door for Jews who wished to break away from rigid conservatism to the realization  of liberal Jewish artistry. He, and the few others like him, were in essence the beginning of Jewish secular artistry in European form prior to the granting of mass emancipation to Jews. [link]

Read More

Cleveland Synagogue's Ark is Guarded by Some Fierce Beasts

JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
By Menachem Wecker

Add caption

OHIO---The ark at Cleveland’s Orthodox Green Road Synagogue looms on an intimidating platform above the congregation. Alternating tan and umber rays — evocative of the divine lights that emanate from the sun in ancient Egyptian art and of St. Francis’s stigmata in Christian paintings — culminate in diamond-shaped niches above the chairs reserved for synagogue officials. There is, as one would expect, an eternal light, and beneath it, a depiction of the Ten Commandments: the double-humped variety recalling the McDonald’s logo. But the two fierce beasts guarding the ark in the synagogue — which traces its roots back to immigrants from Marmaresher Sziger, Hungary, who built a congregation in Cleveland’s Woodland Hills neighborhood in 1910 — are unusual. [link]

Read More

IDF Veteran, Painter Tomer Peretz Wins Inaugural Arthur Szyk Prize of Disruptive Thought and Zionist Art

THE ALGEMEINER

Funeral,' by Tomer Peretz. Photo: Tomer Peretz.

CALIFORNIA---Israeli-American painter, and Israel Defense Forces veteran, Tomer Peretz, 32, was selected for the inaugural Arthur Szyk Prize of Disruptive Thought and Zionist Art, the organizers of the award told The Algemeiner on Monday. Peretz’s work was selected out of more than 100 submissions for the $1,000 award, announced last year, that aims to provide more exposure to young artists by recognizing work that “challenges the static conception of Zionism with ideas that extend beyond the work of art itself.” The jury of The Arthur Szyk Prize included [Craig] Dershowitz, [Ashley] Rindsberg, and [Allison] Chang, as well as David Laxer, founder of Tel Aviv design and branding firm Brandalism, and Deborah Danino, Tel Aviv University PhD Candidate in French Literature. [link]

Read More

Op-ed: In Defense of Zionism

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Michael Oren

The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl

They come from every corner of the country—investment bankers, farmers, computer geeks, jazz drummers, botany professors, car mechanics—leaving their jobs and their families. They risk their lives for an idea. The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. They believe their idea is worth fighting for. Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. In a region reeling with ethnic strife and religious bloodshed, Zionism has engendered a multiethnic, multiracial and religiously diverse society. Arabs serve in the Israel Defense Forces, in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. To live in peace and security with our Palestinian neighbors remains the Zionist dream. [link]

Mr. Oren was Israel's ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013. He holds the chair in international diplomacy at IDC Herzliya in Israel and is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. His books include "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" and "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present." 

Read More

Obama Nominates First Non-Christian to Lead Religious Freedom Initiative

RELIGION DISPATCHES
By Peter Montgomery

“O. C. Blue Amulet” (2009) by Yona Verwer; print 16” x 20"

S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced yesterday (Monday) that President Barack Obama is nominating the first non-Christian, Rabbi David Saperstein, to the post of ambassador for international religious freedom. Saperstein has served as head of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism for more than 30 years, been a member of the advisory council for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and teaches First Amendment and Jewish law at Georgetown Law school. In his remarks on Saperstein’s religious freedom pedigree, Kerry called him “the gold standard,” pointing to his work “across faith lines,” with “women of faith networks,” and with “American Muslim communities.” [link]

Read More

Brussels Jewish Museum Gunman Charged

ARTNET NEWS
By Alexander Forbes

A memorial that sprung up outside the Brussels Jewish Museum, where four were killed as
a result of the May 24 shooting. Photo: Virginia Mayo, courtesy the Associated Press.

BRUSSELS---The man alleged to have shot and killed four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum on May 24, Mehdi Nemmouche, was charged with “murder in a terrorist context” in Brussels on Wednesday, the Jerusalem Post reports. Nemmouche was extradited to Belgium from France on Tuesday, a little over a month after French authorities announced their intention to do so. The 29-year-old is a French citizen of Algerian descent. The attack was carried out using a AK-47 style assault rifle and a handgun, according to surveillance footage released by Belgian police. [link]

Read More

Terror Threat Closes Norway Jewish Museums

ARTNET NEWS 
By Hendrik Hansson

Jewish Museum Olslo Photo: Kjetil Ree via Wikimedia Commons

NORWAY---Jewish museums in Norway were closed on Friday, following an announcement of a possible imminent terror threat according to Art Daily. Norway’s intelligence service (PST) said it had, “recently received information that a group of extremists from Syria may be planning a terrorist attack.” The museums remained closed at the time of writing. Jewish museum officials are concerned that their institutions mat be targeted following the deadly attack on Brussels Jewish museum in May that left four people dead after a man opened fire. [link]

Read More

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin: Bible Mashers

THE TELEGRAPH
By Lucy Davies

Holy Bible by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

UNITED KINGDOM---There are 788,258 words in the King James Bible. How many people can claim to have read every one of them in a single attempt? Two years ago, over a 12-month period, the artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin did just that. The pair began the Holy Bible project by underlining sentences in the text that referred to image-making. “It made me nauseous to be surrounded by so many graphic images,” admits Chanarin. “But also curious. The Bible is so violent, but there’s something acceptable about it. We’re more at ease with violent words than violent pictures.” [link]

'Broomberg & Chanarin: Divine Violence' is at Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales, from July 19; mostyn.org 

Chapter and Verse: A spread from Ezekiel in 'Holy Bible'

'Exodus' from Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s new collage work, 'Holy Bible’

Read More

The First Kosher Comic Book Blazed a Trail for Orthodox Outreach

THE TABLET
By Marjorie Ingall

A panel from Foreskin Man vs. Captain Israel. (Arlen Schumer)

Comics have changed with the times, but they’ve always made for gripping storytelling. And, as Tablet has previously discussed, most of the early superheroes were created by Jews and packed with Jewish subtext—brainiac/wimp persecution, the need to “pass,” the possession of hidden strength, the urge to do tikkun olam and fix a broken world. Jews created the first comic book (Max “Charlie” Gains, ne Ginsburg, produced Famous Funnies, a compilation of newspaper strips sold as a book in 1933), the first graphic novel (Will Eisner’s "A Contract With God," which featured Orthodox Jews), the first Comic Con, and the first comic-book direct-distribution network. Check out Danny Fingeroth’s "Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero" for a more extensive overview. [link]

Read More

Palestinians and Arabs Hang Tough at the New Museum

ARTNET NEWS
By Christian Viveros-Fauné

Installation view, “Here and Elsewhere.” Photo: Benoit Pailley, courtesy New Museum, New York.

NEW YORK---At times walking through the New Museum, with its more than 13 hours of film and video, can feel like an Islamic Cultural Center revival of the French Nouvelle Vague. Early on in their contentious essay for the catalogue accompanying “Here and Elsewhere,” the New Museum’s sprawling, sometimes trying, yet illuminating exhibition of recent art from the Arab world, the show’s curators ask a remarkably timely question: “Is it possible to imagine a history of art that is completely divorced from cultural or social histories?” An exhibition that brings together 45 artists from 12 countries working in different media and from different cultural contexts, “Here and Elsewhere” makes a silk purse from the sow’s ear that is the “progressive” response to exhibitions with a geographical remit. [link]

Read More

Art in New York. Masterpieces & Curiosities. A Russian American Quilt at the Jewish Museum

YAREAH MAGAZINE 

Quilt, Russia and United States, c. 1899, velvet: embroidered with wool, silk, and metallic thread; glass beads. The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Judaica Acquisitions Fund, 1986-119

NEW YORK---Showcasing a colorful patchwork quilt bearing Eastern European and American imagery, Masterpieces & Curiosities: A Russian American Quilt continues a series of exhibitions focused on individual works in the Jewish Museum’s world-renowned collection. On view from August 22, 2014 to February 1, 2015, this exhibition highlights a rare quilt (c. 1899), a fascinating expression of the acculturation process undergone by newly arrived immigrants. The quilt was owned by a Russian Jewish family that likely arrived in America during the late 19th century and incorporates imagery from both cultures. Also included in the exhibition are related works from the Museum’s collection which feature Russian motifs or reflect a conflation of Russian and Jewish traditions, items of Americana that provide context, and a few works from other collections. [link]

Read More

The Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Paint

JERUSALEM POST
By Ariel Hendelman

I just take impressionist style and I put it into something Jewish and connect it to ‘kedusha’ or Eretz Yisrael. That’s always been my thing,’ says painter Elisheva Shira

ISRAEL---Beginning Monday and running through the 29th, the Gallery Al Ha’agam in Ra’anana Park is hosting the multi-artist exhibition, “Moments of Happiness.” The exhibit features sculptors, photographers and painters. One of the featured painters, Elisheva Shira, talks about her artistic journey from America to Israel, incorporating Torah into her paintings, and preparing for her first big show. [link]

Read More

Theatre Review: ‘The Pianist of Willesden Lane,’ a Jewish Girl’s War Story

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Charles Isherwood

Mona Golabek as a Jewish teenager who escapes the Nazis in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” at 59E59 Theaters.

NEW YORK---“The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” which opened on Tuesday at the 59E59 Theaters, tells the remarkable story of Lisa’s years in wartime London with an economy of means and a simplicity that only enhance the emotional effect. Packed with startling setbacks (the house at Willesden Lane is destroyed during the Blitz) and equally dramatic triumphs (against all odds, Mrs. Cohen has it rebuilt), it’s the kind of tale that would probably seem melodramatic if it were fiction. “Never stop playing,” her mother told her just before she boarded the train in Vienna, “and I will be with you every step of the way.” Lisa took the words to heart. Spiritually speaking, her fingers never left the keys, because only through her music could she maintain a connection to the vanished happiness of her Vienna childhood and the love of the family she feared lost forever. [link]

Read More

Why Jewish Artists Continue To Be Inspired by The Bible

THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
By Benjamin Ivry

Responding to Scripture: R.B. Kitaj was known to include Jewish content in his paintings.

ISRAEL---Art historian Samantha Baskind, author of, among others, “Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art” and the Encyclopedia of Jewish American Artists, now tackles thorny problems of identity and representation in her latest book. “Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America” asks why several modern American Jewish artists were inspired by biblical themes when their goyish contemporaries dismissed such imagery as “outmoded.” Their use of such imagery could involve complex, multilayered metaphors, and even included humor, yet always expressed a highly serious inner essence. [link]

Read More

Response to Bill O'Reilly: Jesus Didn't Start a New Religion

OP-EDNEWS.COM
By Bernard Starr

Jesus Preaching in the Synagogue by Maurycy Gottlieb by wikimedia.org

Bill O'Reilly disputed the two main points of my recent HuffPost blog (also in OpEdNews) on his July 16 The O'Reilly Factor broadcast: My affirmation of Jesus' lifelong dedication to Judaism (meaning he did not start a new religion) and my assertion that Renaissance art representations of Jesus omit his Jewish identity and thus falsify biblical history. Art historians do not deny the absence of a Semitic Jewish Jesus in Renaissance artworks. Wouldn't it would be better and more useful to celebrate the common ground of Judaism and Christianity rather than manufacturing divisive spins? Perhaps that's what Pope Francis was suggesting in his statement: "Inside every Christian is a Jew." [link]

Read More

Movie Review: Zach Braff Directs and Stars in ‘Wish I Was Here’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Stephen Holden

From left, Pierce Gagnon, Zach Braff and Joey King in "Wish I Was Here." Credit Focus Features

HOLLYWOOD---Until you partly surrender to its underlying good will and sincerity, watching “Wish I Was Here” is like observing an experiment in a cinematic test kitchen. “Wish I Was Here,” which studies the turmoil of a middle-class Los Angeles family. The family under the film’s lens is the Blooms: a Jewish clan whose stern but caring patriarch, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin), a retired microbiologist, is dying of lung cancer. Gabe isn’t a lead role, but Mr. Patinkin’s moving, understated portrayal of a thorny older man facing the end makes him the film’s emotional center of gravity. He is especially impressive when his voice begins to waver and rise in pitch, and you feel the character’s deeply submerged emotion. [link]

“Wish I Was Here” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for language and some sexual content 

In April 2013, raised over $2 million in financing for “Wish I Was Here”

Read More

Travel: An Edification Vacation in Chautauqua, NY

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Lisa Schwarzbaum

John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, lectures at the Chautauqua Institution.

NEW YORK---A week at Chautauqua is a microcosm of what we can make of our lives, if only we remember to slow down and pay attention. For nine weeks every summer, the 750-acre campus is a cheery, low-keyed welter of lectures, classes, concerts, theater, dance performances and art exhibitions. It’s a place — far from Westchester — in which I spent a happy week last month, drawn to a hidden utopia that has, over the years, welcomed Mark Twain and William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Roosevelt and Sandra Day O’Connor. Opportunities for spiritual uplift continue to figure prominently on the daily agenda, with services conducted every morning. But the extended denominational menu now includes Roman Catholic, Unitarian, Christian Science, Quaker, Jewish and Zen Buddhist gatherings, and Friday Muslim prayer. [link]

Read More

Art Review: ‘Back to Eden,’ at the Museum of Biblical Art

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ken Johnson

Detail of "Neither Shall You Touch It" by Anonda Bell

NEW YORK---It’s one of the greatest stories ever told, the Bible’s tale of God, Adam, Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, as related in Genesis 2:4 to 3:24. Derived from Babylonian mythology, it circulated in Jewish oral tradition before being written down in the 10th century B.C. It’s both a strength and a weakness of the exhibition that it leaves you with many more questions than answers. What does Eden represent? A state of mind? A social utopia? An environmentalist dream? A memory of prenatal bliss? Union with the divine, whatever that might be? What would it take to get back to Eden? Perhaps art is a way to sneak back in — if only for occasional brief visits. [link]

“Back to Eden: Contemporary Artists Wander the Garden” continues through Sept. 28 at the Museum of Biblical Art, 1865 Broadway, at 61st Street; 212-408-1500, mobia.org. 

Read More

In Brooklyn, a Trove of Hebrew Books From Centuries Past

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Allan Kozinn

A page from Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah from 1574.Credit The Chabad-Lubavitch Library

NEW YORK---The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a Hasidic group known for its outreach to Jewish communities around the world, has amassed one of the largest collections of rare Jewish manuscripts and books anywhere – on the order of 250,000 items, including some that go back to the 11th century or earlier. The exhibition is open Sundays through Thursdays, noon through 5 p.m., and Fridays, noon through 2 p.m. at Chabad’s headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It will run through at least February. [link]

Read More