Culture View

Art, Religion And Ambiguity

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:58:00 +0000

Culture View

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

One thing that often turns people off from art is that they can’t figure out what it means. The lack of fixed meaning frustrates them. The more abstract the art form — poetry, for instance, but even more so with dance, music and fine art — the more serious this problem becomes. But the cultural critic Charles Rosen makes an important point about art’s essential ambiguity — its inherent lack of fixed meaning — in his astute new collection of essays, “Freedom and the Arts.”

Charles Rosen

Riding The Hyphen

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:37:48 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

When I was in college, a professor blew my mind when he explained the birth of modernism this way: In the old days, when artists looked out a window, they saw a garden. Today, when they look outside, they see the window.

In other words, the process of looking — or the presence of the “frame” — is what now captured people’s attention.

‘Altering’ The Bible’s Language

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:58:58 +0000

Culture View

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

If you ask secular, well-educated people how well they know the Bible, odds are you’ll be met with blank stares, possibly even sneers. This is perfectly understandable. And it may not even stem from anti-religious sentiments — after all, there is only so much time we have, and there are so many other worthy texts to read.

Anne, For A New Generation

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:21:00 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

I was unexpectedly moved when, 18 months ago, the chestnut tree outside Anne Frank’s hiding place in Amsterdam fell over. Rotting and ancient, the tree collapsed along with its support structure.

Kids And Kindles

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:46:00 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

At a recent program at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center on the new digital landscape, a rabbi and three prominent writers debated whether our current “Digital Overload” — as the panel was titled — is leading to a more interesting cultural environment for our children, or whether we are going down a rabbit hole of apocalyptic distraction. Unsurprisingly, no answer was declared. But the conversation was notable for several reasons.

children Digital Overload technology

And the winner for Best Work of Zionist Art Goes to...

Eric Herschthal — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:42:14 +0000

Culture View

posted by:

Eric Herschthal

The culture wars in Israel these days makes you pine for the ones we had here, in the States, some 15 years ago. In America, it all seemed like grand theater--Giuliani, for instance, catering to hard-core Christians aghast at a painting of the Virgin Mary covered in feces. But in Israel the state has a far stronger hand in culture. So when the current Likud Culture Minister, Limor Livnat, threatened to withhold money to artists who refused to perform in the Ariel performing center, in the occupied West Bank, it meant something.

Ariel Art Boycott culture minister eric herschthal limor livnat ohad naharin petition prize the jewish week Zionism zionist prize

Sorry About That

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:34:00 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

I don’t know about you, but I made a lot of mistakes this past year. I forgot to pick up my kids at school once. I gained weight in all the wrong places. I was consistently late in writing this column — and in just about everything else of importance in my life.

This is par for the course, and most of the time, after purging myself on Yom Kippur, I can make it at least to Sukkot before a new mistake haunts me — usually in the form of an injury to myself or a small child during the construction of the sukkah in our backyard.

Seeking Higher Ground On The Holy Days

Dara Levin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:05:00 +0000

Culture View

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

In the new film “Higher Ground,” there’s a scene where Vera Farmiga, the film’s director and star, fitfully tries to pray in her bathroom. She’s trying out a method — speaking in tongues — that she recently saw performed by her close friend. Like the friend, Farmiga’s character is an oddity in their Christian fundamentalist group: a free-spirited iconoclast with a highly inquisitive mind.

Playing Games With Jewish Education

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

You can’t avoid it anymore.

Computer-based games like Farmville or Angry Birds or Grand Theft Auto, available on laptops and phones and game consoles, have become almost as ubiquitous as social media sites like Facebook.

Whether you are a teacher or principal, a parent or grandparent, a marketer or consumer, a smartphone user or a paperback-reading commuter, you can’t help but notice how these games fill the downtime minutes of millions of people, and increasingly are the first thing they connect to when they boot up their machines.

games Jewish Education technology

Does Arts Reporting Matter?

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:42:34 +0000

Culture View

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

If you’re an arts journalist these days, it’s hard not to feel a pang of envy at your colleagues covering the media and politics. For the past few weeks, the media beat has basked in the glory of taking down one of journalists’ favorite villains, Rupert Murdoch, after the relentless pursuit of The News of the World’s phone-hacking scandal.

Israel Zangwill's "Melting Pot" and Europe's Anti-Muslim Problem: Lessons from Two Struggles

Eric Herschthal — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:47:30 +0000

Culture View

posted by:

Eric Herschthal

It doesn't matter if you're liberal or conservative--if you're European, "mutliculturalism" has become a dirty word. The New York Times ran an op-ed today by a British writer attacking multiculturalism as form of public policy.

anti-islam assimilation english defense league israel zangwill Jews july 7 bombing kenan malik lauren collins london multiculturalism Muslim New York Times the jewish week the melting pot the new yorker

Lessons From A ‘Holy Junk Heap’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:05:05 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

I recently inhaled Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole’s new book Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. Part of the Jewish Encounters series from Schocken and Nextbook, this headlong excavation into one of the greatest literary finds in Jewish history opened my eyes to the complex drama behind the sudden “appearance” of this storehouse of medieval Hebrew documents.

Von Trier And The Conscience Of Cannes

Dani Shetrit — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:02:00 +0000

Culture View

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

It often seems that we’ve become emotionally numb to talk about Nazis and Hitler. We toss around the word “Nazi” with such impunity these days that the essential meaning of who Hitler was and what the Nazis represent appears entirely lost.

Some worry that ignorance and latent anti-Semitism lurks behind our lax standards, but many suggest otherwise: it’s Holocaust fatigue, they say, a culture saturated not with too little knowledge about Nazis, but rather, too much.

Film Holocaust lars von trier

Next Question…

Dani Shetrit — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:35:00 +0000

Culture View

Daniel Schifrin

Special To The Jewish Week

The other day I interviewed writer Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” as part of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s 100th anniversary celebration.

Illuminating A Jewish Story

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:37:30 +0000

Culture View

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

Here’s a dirty secret about Jewish journalism: a number of the stories we write aren’t really Jewish in nature. A story may be about a Jew, but other than that, there often isn’t much else of Jewish substance in many of the stories we print.

Editors hate it when you pitch a story whose sole qualification for being published is that your subject is Jewish. But the reality is that mainstream Jewish publications would not exist if we didn’t run these stories.

Art Jewish life Jewish Museum Maira Kalman