New York Times

This week brought news of two shocking deaths: the first of Albert Abramson, 94, an important figure in building the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.  And then there was Peter Novick, 77, an historian who wrote a withering attack of the Holocaust’s undue influence on American Jewish identity.  The two would probably have had little to agree

Perhaps the greatest irony of classical music is that, while Jews have excelled in the genre as both composers and musicians, they have left very little notable music with an identifiable Jewish strain.  Many have tried, to be sure—Leonard Bernstein and Steven Reich, to name two.  But both those greats will be forever famous for their non-Jewish work.

It’s hard to overstate the euphoria that greeted Christain Marclay’s art-video “The Clock” last year.

Like many liberals, David Brooks is a conservative I can like.  But every now and then he falls in with the wrong conservative crowd.  And this week it was in his swooning endorsement of Charles Murray and his new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.”

With a name like “The Prime Minister’s Cabinet,” you’d think this television show was yet another British drama, a “Downton Abbey” sequel starring, say, Winston Churchill.  But it’s not—no, it has nothing to do with Brits, but with, of all things, Israelis.  Yes, in a culture story today, The New York Times devotes a full piece to an obscure Israeli political drama, made for T.V., that even critics in Isra

A couple of months ago, I wrote a story about the excellent and horrifying exhibit “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” now on view at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.  It describes how Nazi Germany took the pseudo-science of eugenics—or “racial hygiene”; attempting to create a purer race through breeding, sterili

It’s probably impossible to count the number of film reviews that attack kitschy takes on the Holocaust like this: “an impossible movie that has no reason for being other than as another pop-culture palliative for a trauma it can’t bear to face.” 

Or like this: “This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies …and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling.”