Robin Cembalest
By Robin Cembalest
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Opinion The Complicated Relationship Between Jews And Tattoos
This article originally appeared in The Forward on July 4, 1997. The first tattoo, speculates Peter Trachtenberg, was the mark of God placed on Cain “lest anyone finding him kill him.” In other words, muses the author of “7 Tattoos,” “From the very beginning tattoos were associated with wrongdoing.” but that was not their only…
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Culture A ‘Child of Daumier’ Confronts the 1990s
Jack Levine died at his home on Monday, November 8, aged 95. An American Social Realist painter who disliked the expressionism and abstract painting he saw become popular during his lifetime, Levine depicted, with visceral force, the social interactions between people. Often these skewered the powerful, as described in this 1997 profile and studio visit…
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Culture Marrying I.B. Singer and Grandma Moses
Originally published in the Forward April 22, 1994. It is early evening in Crown Heights, and children fresh from yeshiva trickle into a narrow storefront. They dump their books, fling off their coats and sprawl on the gray industrial carpeting. There they spend the next hour raptly contemplating a kitchen kettle. This is not some…
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Culture Eban Gets Plastered — With George Segal
Originally published in the Forward June 16, 1995. Abba Eban has endured countless situations fraught with danger, discomfort and uncertainty, but none quite like the one he faced when George Segal wrapped his body in plaster-impregnated bandages. This was the first step in the making of the cast that was to become “Portrait of Abba…
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