Menachem Wecker
By Menachem Wecker
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Culture We’ve Seen Martin Luther From Both Sides Now
Martin Luther’s spoon, which he gifted to his friend, a Hebrew specialist who helped him translate the Old Testament in the 1520s, is unusual, to say the least. Said to come from a unicorn’s horn, it was meant to protect against poison. The spoon folds up and is secured with a pin shaped like a…
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Culture How Did This Ass Wind Up on a Stained Glass Window?
The biblical Balaam’s reputation centers on striking and eventually talking to his ass — the donkey sort. But as far as rabbinic tradition was concerned, Balaam may as well have been one himself. The prophet, who saw God thwart his effort to curse the Israelites and turn his attacks into blessings, couldn’t see an armed…
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Art Did Mexican Artists Produce the First Images of the Holocaust?
Velvet-black smoke pours out of a locomotive looming on the horizon, accentuating the train’s length. It ascends heavenward, but the smoke is no Exodus pillar of cloud guiding the Israelites. This ominous billowing form signals the train’s imminent departure, as armed Nazis herd people aboard. In the foreground, a burly soldier shines a lantern into…
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Culture Keith Sachs Would Rather Be Collecting Art in Philadelphia
Clad in a glen plaid blazer and paisley tie, Keith Sachs, the white-haired Philadelphia art collector, pointed to a Dan Flavin sculpture from his collection. “The Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Robert Rosenblum),” consists of a white fluorescent bulb installed diagonally on the wall. “He needed some money, because he was getting married at…
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Culture What Rembrandt Painted When He Painted Jews
Prior to 1629, when the 23-year-old Rembrandt painted “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” the scene, the culmination of the biblical episode long associated with anti-Semitism that has come to epitomize greediness and selling out, had been treated only a handful of times in art. The narrative, which appears only in the book of…
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Life Iran-Born Artist Draws Comfortably From Both Nietzsche and Rumi
In the artist statement on her website, Los Angeles-based Angela Larian cites a variety of influences, including Plato’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies, as well as the writings of Persian poets Rumi (13th century) and Hafez (14th century). The blend, says the Tehran-born artist who moved to the United States as a 15-year-old in 1978, is “quite…
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Life Barbara Goodstein, ‘The Most Original Sculptor of Her Generation’
Barbara Goodstein, an artist who trained in Mexico, England, and the U.S., whom critic Jed Perl “probably the most original sculptor of her generation,” died on December 5 at age 70, Bowery Gallery announced. In the three decades she showed at Bowery, which is based in Chelsea in Manhattan, Goodstein regularly exhibited sculptures and reliefs…
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Culture The Jewish Secrets of Video Game Guru Ralph Baer
Jewish inventor Ralph H. Baer’s workshop desk isn’t exactly messy, but the 180 items on it represent the sort of organized chaos that cliché prescribes for brilliant minds. On a shelf sits his 1978 invention Simon, the iconic game with red, yellow, blue and green buttons that calls upon players to follow increasingly difficult sound…
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