Menachem Wecker
By Menachem Wecker
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Life Picturing Mary, History’s Best-Known Jewish Woman
Nicolò Barabino’s 1884 mural “Faith with Representations,” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts An exhibit about the Virgin Mary, which is curated by a Florentine priest, makes the case that the mother of Jesus must be understood, at least in part, as a Jewish woman. That the Christian messiah’s mother was born…
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News ‘Homely’ Ancient Rock Boost King David’s Claim to Existence
(JTA) — Dimly lit, the stone slab, or stele, doesn’t look particularly noteworthy, especially when compared to the more lavish sphinxes, jewelry and cauldrons one encounters en route to the room where it is installed. Indeed, in a Twitter post this fall, art journalist Lee Rosenbaum described the nearly 13-by-16 inch c. 830 BCE rock,…
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The Schmooze Remembering a 20-Year Protest for Soviet Jewry
Photo Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Long before Occupy Wall Street, protests were held from 12:30 to 12:45 p.m. every day from December 10, 1970, until January 27, 1991, in front of the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., in an effort to raise awareness about the mistreatment of Soviet Jews. Those…
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The Schmooze Jews of the Civil Rights Movement
Among the more than 200 items which are slated to appear in the Library of Congress exhibit “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom” in Washington, D.C. — which will be on view until September 12, 2015 — are documents written by civil rights leaders, newspaper clippings, legal briefs and artwork….
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Culture The Wonder Women of Video
Nowhere, perhaps, is the distinction between interior and outside space more pronounced than in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” Prince Prospero and his privileged colleagues hole up in “the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys,” which is decorated with the prince’s “eccentric yet august taste.” The outside world, plagued…
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Culture All God’s Griffins Got Wings at Cleveland Synagogue
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…
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The Schmooze Mystical Gardening and Digital Art
Growing up in central New Jersey in the early 1950s, Allen Hirsh knew virtually nothing about Judaism as a religion. “My family was rather typical of the community: extremely left-wing labor Zionists,” he said of his parents, who spoke Yiddish at least half of the time in the house. Hirsh’s father, a chicken farmer-turned-landscaper, went…
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The Schmooze Meret Oppenheim’s Magical Tables and Teacups
Photo: Suzanne Khalil/NMWA Although it stands still, Meret Oppenheim’s “Table with Bird’s Feet” (1983) brims with kinetic energy. The work comes exactly as advertised; had it not anticipated “Beauty and the Beast” by some eight years, it could have been a remnant of the magical castle’s set, and at first glance, the viewer is thrilled…
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