Category: Arts

Shir Ami Leo Slomovitz Scholar-In-Residence Series Presents Andrew Berns, “Beyond Merchant of Venice: Jews and Christians in the Italian Renaissance” on Friday April 8, 2011. If The Merchant of Venice is your first association when you think of Jews in the Italian renaissance, this lecture will introduce you to a whole new way of thinking [...]

For Si Lewen, returning to Germany in 1943 was a homecoming. Not a celebratory one, but one of necessity. Ten years earlier, he had fled the country as a teenager. He returned as a 24-year-old American soldier. Si was one of The Ritchie Boys, a special unit from Camp Ritchie, the military training center in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains. “We were mostly German-born soldiers who knew the language and psychology of the Germans,” explains Si, now 93, “and we were trained to interrogate and coax German soldiers to surrender.” After all he went through to realize his dream of living in the United States, Si had to return to his homeland for payback. “I knew what the Nazis were all about,” he adds, “and I had to get even.”
Si’s deepest, darkest memories of that experience inspired his 72-piece pictorial narrative titled A Journey. An exhibit showcasing a selection of the work is now on view at the James A. Michener Museum. These haunting images represent Si’s arrival at Buchenwald, one of the most notorious of the concentration camps. “We were some of the first to enter, just two days after the liberation,” he continues, explaining that they had heard about the camps, but what they saw when they entered was unbelievable. “I broke down. I suddenly realized that if not for miracles, I would have ended up here.”
Born in Lublin, Poland in 1918, Simon was just a year old when his family moved to Berlin to escape persecution in that country. His years in Germany came to an end in 1932 with Hitler’s heightened power. “When I heard the news reports I told my parents that we had to leave. I knew what was going to happen,” he says in whispers. With contacts in France, Si’s father sent him and his brother to Paris in 1933, the first step to reaching America. “We had an uncle in New York who was helping us with our papers so we could leave Europe,” he recounts. Two years later, Si and his family arrived in New York City.
To his dismay, anti-Semitism followed them. His memories of growing up in Germany were of being bullied—“I was the little Polish Jew boy, who was fun to beat up,” he says. In United States, he found that, to some, he was still that little Polish Jew boy. Early in his new life, a policeman brutally beat him in Central Park. “After that experience,” Si reveals with tears in his eyes, “I tried to kill myself.” Instead, he re-channeled his anger and, in 1942, enlisted in the army. Soon he and the other Ritchie Boys were dropped into Germany. With loudspeakers in hand, Si and his unit barreled across the countryside in an armored car, with psychological warfare as their weapon. “Yes, at times I was scared,” he admits, “but every time I was face-to-face with a German soldier, I saw the image of that New York City cop.”
“When I returned from the war I was disgusted. I wanted nothing to do with that experience. I didn’t even want to paint,” he says, though as early as age 5, he had found refuge in painting and had art training in both Berlin and Grenoble, France. But eventually Si began taking art classes at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York. “I was painting landscapes, still lifes and nudes,” Si recounts. And with great success—his work was sold in galleries and exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
But his war experiences continued to haunt him. “I would wake up with these nagging images,” Si reveals, “images that would not go away.” He began to document his memories in what would become A Journey, a novel without words about an imaginary visitor’s journey to a concentration camp, strikingly done in black and white. As Si explains, during the war, when the situation reached a climax, color disappeared and even blood was not red. With the creation of A Journey, Si could begin to come to terms with his memories.
For Si today, art still provides solace and a means of expression. Sitting in his tiny studio in Montgomery County with Rennie, his wife of 70 years, he talks about his current project, an homage to Auguste Rodin and his sculpture, Gates of Hell. He explains that Rodin’s impressions of hell emanated from his religious upbringing. Si’s perspective was formed at Buchenwald: “I’ve seen hell on earth.”

Mark Cohen @ Philadelphia Museum of Art

Working primarily in and around the small Pennsylvania cities of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, American street photographer Mark Cohen has been photographing people and places encountered at random since the 1970s, pushing aspects of street photography to extremes. Mark Cohen: Strange Evidence is an exhibition of nearly 70 of his black-and-white and color photographs now on view in the Levy Gallery of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—the most extensive survey of Cohen’s work since a 1981 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Strange Evidence focuses primarily on Cohen’s images from the 1970s, through which he first garnered international attention. He employed a wide-angle lens with a long depth of field that permitted him to range very close to his subjects. He also frequently used a flash, as in his 1975 print Flashed Man on Square, which accents a lone figure sitting on a park bench. He rarely used his viewfinder, instead positioning the camera away from his body as he quickly walked by subjects, snapping pictures, leading to seeming compositional mishaps, such as Jacket/Rain Drops from 1978, featuring a figure from neck to waist that completely fills the frame.
“Mark Cohen captures essential qualities of modern American life in his photographs,” says Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs. “His images are often unsettling, showing us a world filled with anxieties, accidents and desires. He focuses on the reactions he elicits from his subjects through the act of taking a photograph, and often eliminates much of the surrounding scene from his pictures. This is one way his photographs function as strange evidence—they may not provide traditional sight cues or even clear motifs, but they distill crucial aspects of human experience and document the historical realities of the places he shoots.” The exhibition runs through February at the Perelman Building is at Fairmount and Pennsylvania Avenues in Philadelphia. For more information, go to philamuseum.org.

Rita Bernstein @ Gallery 339

In the late 1980s, Rita Bernstein gave up a successful career as a civil rights lawyer to devote most of her time to making photographs. “I was primarily involved with sex discrimination issues.  Some of my most rewarding accomplishments from that time in my life include opening Central High School and Girard College to female applicants—both schools had previously been closed to girls,” says Bernstein. “I have always been very interested in people and how they relate to one another, both of which are core issues in civil rights law and both of which I have continued to explore in my work.”
Her subjects have often been family members. However, explains Bernstein, who grew up in New York in a relatively observant home, “I have photographed my daughter very frequently over the years, but I never really viewed the pictures as particularly about her (nor did she) or about my gaze as ‘parent.’ Rather, I am exploring memories, and emotions, of my own childhood.  The most valuable thing about photographing one’s family, of course, is the incredible access: When the light is just right, there they are. So it can be very intuitive and spontaneous. Over the years, I have continued occasionally to photograph children, but it is no longer my intention to examine childhood specifically. Rather, the uninhibited behavior of young people is a rich clue to the interior life generally; with awkwardness and eloquence, children practice the same complex psychological and social dramas with which we continue to struggle as adults. I was entranced equally by their grace and their missteps; they would falter and make midcourse corrections, and they almost never gave up.”
Although her imagery is decidedly contemporary, she has maintained a strong commitment to traditional printmaking processes and the beauty of the handmade object. Bernstein applies liquid silver emulsion onto delicate Japanese Gampi paper in a process that is uncertain and serendipitous; no two prints are ever quite alike. Bernstein accepts and even embraces the inability to wholly control the process. It imparts individuality and subtle imperfections that are in accord with the fragility and humanity of her images. “I have been very process oriented in my work from the beginning,” she says. “I always loved the ‘object quality’ of beautiful prints and saw that as a critical component of what I wanted to do. It has never been just about the image for me. I searched for some time for a process that was sympathetic to my imagery.  In both my pictures and my prints, I am courting the imperfect, the messy, the raw and the vulnerable.”
Bernstein’s photographs have been widely published and exhibited, and she has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Independence Foundation, and the Leeway Foundation. Her prints are in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Woodmere Art Museum. The exhibition runs through January 29, 2011 at Gallery 339, 339 South 21st Street at Pine Street in Center City, Philadelphia. For more information, call 215-731-1530 or go to gallery339.com

By Beth S. Buxbaum

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For Si Lewen, returning to Germany in 1943 was a homecoming. Not a celebratory one, but one of necessity. Ten years earlier, he had fled the country as a teenager. He returned as a 24-year-old American soldier. Si was one of The Ritchie Boys, a special unit from Camp Ritchie, the military training center in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains. “We were mostly German-born soldiers who knew the language and psychology of the Germans,” explains Si, now 93, “and we were trained to interrogate and coax German soldiers to surrender.” After all he went through to realize his dream of living in the United States, Si had to return to his homeland for payback. “I knew what the Nazis were all about,” he adds, “and I had to get even.”
Si’s deepest, darkest memories of that experience inspired his 72-piece pictorial narrative titled A Journey. An exhibit showcasing a selection of the work is now on view at the James A. Michener Museum. These haunting images represent Si’s arrival at Buchenwald, one of the most notorious of the concentration camps. “We were some of the first to enter, just two days after the liberation,” he continues, explaining that they had heard about the camps, but what they saw when they entered was unbelievable. “I broke down. I suddenly realized that if not for miracles, I would have ended up here.”
Born in Lublin, Poland in 1918, Simon was just a year old when his family moved to Berlin to escape persecution in that country. His years in Germany came to an end in 1932 with Hitler’s heightened power. “When I heard the news reports I told my parents that we had to leave. I knew what was going to happen,” he says in whispers. With contacts in France, Si’s father sent him and his brother to Paris in 1933, the first step to reaching America. “We had an uncle in New York who was helping us with our papers so we could leave Europe,” he recounts. Two years later, Si and his family arrived in New York City.
To his dismay, anti-Semitism followed them. His memories of growing up in Germany were of being bullied—“I was the little Polish Jew boy, who was fun to beat up,” he says. In United States, he found that, to some, he was still that little Polish Jew boy. Early in his new life, a policeman brutally beat him in Central Park. “After that experience,” Si reveals with tears in his eyes, “I tried to kill myself.” Instead, he re-channeled his anger and, in 1942, enlisted in the army. Soon he and the other Ritchie Boys were dropped into Germany. With loudspeakers in hand, Si and his unit barreled across the countryside in an armored car, with psychological warfare as their weapon. “Yes, at times I was scared,” he admits, “but every time I was face-to-face with a German soldier, I saw the image of that New York City cop.”
“When I returned from the war I was disgusted. I wanted nothing to do with that experience. I didn’t even want to paint,” he says, though as early as age 5, he had found refuge in painting and had art training in both Berlin and Grenoble, France. But eventually Si began taking art classes at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York. “I was painting landscapes, still lifes and nudes,” Si recounts. And with great success—his work was sold in galleries and exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
But his war experiences continued to haunt him. “I would wake up with these nagging images,” Si reveals, “images that would not go away.” He began to document his memories in what would become A Journey, a novel without words about an imaginary visitor’s journey to a concentration camp, strikingly done in black and white. As Si explains, during the war, when the situation reached a climax, color disappeared and even blood was not red. With the creation of A Journey, Si could begin to come to terms with his memories.
For Si today, art still provides solace and a means of expression. Sitting in his tiny studio in Montgomery County with Rennie, his wife of 70 years, he talks about his current project, an homage to Auguste Rodin and his sculpture, Gates of Hell. He explains that Rodin’s impressions of hell emanated from his religious upbringing. Si’s perspective was formed at Buchenwald: “I’ve seen hell on earth.”

Mark Cohen @ Philadelphia Museum of Art

Working primarily in and around the small Pennsylvania cities of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, American street photographer Mark Cohen has been photographing people and places encountered at random since the 1970s, pushing aspects of street photography to extremes. Mark Cohen: Strange Evidence is an exhibition of nearly 70 of his black-and-white and color photographs now on view in the Levy Gallery of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art—the most extensive survey of Cohen’s work since a 1981 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Strange Evidence focuses primarily on Cohen’s images from the 1970s, through which he first garnered international attention. He employed a wide-angle lens with a long depth of field that permitted him to range very close to his subjects. He also frequently used a flash, as in his 1975 print Flashed Man on Square, which accents a lone figure sitting on a park bench. He rarely used his viewfinder, instead positioning the camera away from his body as he quickly walked by subjects, snapping pictures, leading to seeming compositional mishaps, such as Jacket/Rain Drops from 1978, featuring a figure from neck to waist that completely fills the frame.
“Mark Cohen captures essential qualities of modern American life in his photographs,” says Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs. “His images are often unsettling, showing us a world filled with anxieties, accidents and desires. He focuses on the reactions he elicits from his subjects through the act of taking a photograph, and often eliminates much of the surrounding scene from his pictures. This is one way his photographs function as strange evidence—they may not provide traditional sight cues or even clear motifs, but they distill crucial aspects of human experience and document the historical realities of the places he shoots.” The exhibition runs through February at the Perelman Building is at Fairmount and Pennsylvania Avenues in Philadelphia. For more information, go to philamuseum.org.

Rita Bernstein @ Gallery 339

In the late 1980s, Rita Bernstein gave up a successful career as a civil rights lawyer to devote most of her time to making photographs. “I was primarily involved with sex discrimination issues.  Some of my most rewarding accomplishments from that time in my life include opening Central High School and Girard College to female applicants—both schools had previously been closed to girls,” says Bernstein. “I have always been very interested in people and how they relate to one another, both of which are core issues in civil rights law and both of which I have continued to explore in my work.”
Her subjects have often been family members. However, explains Bernstein, who grew up in New York in a relatively observant home, “I have photographed my daughter very frequently over the years, but I never really viewed the pictures as particularly about her (nor did she) or about my gaze as ‘parent.’ Rather, I am exploring memories, and emotions, of my own childhood.  The most valuable thing about photographing one’s family, of course, is the incredible access: When the light is just right, there they are. So it can be very intuitive and spontaneous. Over the years, I have continued occasionally to photograph children, but it is no longer my intention to examine childhood specifically. Rather, the uninhibited behavior of young people is a rich clue to the interior life generally; with awkwardness and eloquence, children practice the same complex psychological and social dramas with which we continue to struggle as adults. I was entranced equally by their grace and their missteps; they would falter and make midcourse corrections, and they almost never gave up.”
Although her imagery is decidedly contemporary, she has maintained a strong commitment to traditional printmaking processes and the beauty of the handmade object. Bernstein applies liquid silver emulsion onto delicate Japanese Gampi paper in a process that is uncertain and serendipitous; no two prints are ever quite alike. Bernstein accepts and even embraces the inability to wholly control the process. It imparts individuality and subtle imperfections that are in accord with the fragility and humanity of her images. “I have been very process oriented in my work from the beginning,” she says. “I always loved the ‘object quality’ of beautiful prints and saw that as a critical component of what I wanted to do. It has never been just about the image for me. I searched for some time for a process that was sympathetic to my imagery.  In both my pictures and my prints, I am courting the imperfect, the messy, the raw and the vulnerable.”
Bernstein’s photographs have been widely published and exhibited, and she has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Independence Foundation, and the Leeway Foundation. Her prints are in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Woodmere Art Museum. The exhibition runs through January 29, 2011 at Gallery 339, 339 South 21st Street at Pine Street in Center City, Philadelphia. For more information, call 215-731-1530 or go to gallery339.com

By Beth S. Buxbaum

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For Si Lewen, returning to Germany in 1943 was a homecoming. Not a celebratory one, but one of necessity. Ten years earlier, he had fled the country as a teenager. He returned as a 24-year-old American soldier. Si was one of The Ritchie Boys, a special unit from Camp Ritchie, the military training center in [...]

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For Si Lewen, returning to Germany in 1943 was a homecoming. Not a celebratory one, but one of necessity. Ten years earlier, he had fled the country as a teenager. He returned as a 24-year-old American soldier. Si was one of The Ritchie Boys, a special unit from Camp Ritchie, the military training center in [...]

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August 15, 2011

I watched the eight Republican candidates debate among themselves last week.  Many of the opinion-makers of our country, early on decided to attack many of these candidates, most of whom either are themselves card-carrying members or adherents of the Tea Party as well as members of the Republican Party.  All are seeking Republican Party support while advocating Tea Party positions on major issues, e.g., reducing or eliminating entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and slashing federal government expenditures.

Candidates like Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) have been described by some observers of the political scene as wackos or crazies.  I think those views are now changing.  I must admit here that I have used those words in describing the views of some candidates, but I won’t anymore.  The eight participants in the debate handled themselves extremely well.  While I was not persuaded by their arguments and views and remain a Democrat supporting many Democratic programs, I can well understand why they and their supporters demand changes in federal programs along the lines advocated by Tea Party philosophy.  Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll, coming in one percentage point ahead of Ron Paul.  Tim Pawlenty came in third and has withdrawn from the race.

Liberal philosophy has adopted the Keynesian position that in times of recession and depression, government must prime the pump and spend its way out to achieve better times.  The Tea Party view and that of the Conservative government of David Cameron in Great Britain adheres to the old-fashioned view that my mom often expressed:  “You don’t spend money you don’t have.”  That was my view when I was mayor of New York City and in my personal life.  I have two credit cards.  I have never paid charges on either of them over and above my actual purchases.  I am one of those customers the credit card companies hate and may lose money on, if they are dependent on the usurious rates of interest they receive from those using their credit cards as access to bank loans.

When I was Mayor, I supported then and do now a GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) balanced budget imposed by the state legislature requiring New York City to limit its operating budget to what was reasonable to expect the City to receive the year of the adopted budget.  The Tea Party believes in a balanced budget for the U.S. and wants to enact it into law by the adoption of a constitutional amendment.  Liberals are horrified with the idea.  My mother would have loved it.  It seems to me to make sense, provided there is an exception when the U.S. is at war.

We were a lower-middle class family when I grew up in Brooklyn.  Perhaps even poorer than we thought.  My father made $65 a week.  Our rent in Flatbush in 1941 was $65 a month – the then accepted ratio – and my parents were able to lead a reasonably decent lifestyle, bringing up three children and sending them to college.  I believe my parents values would be described as politically liberal.  Early on in my political career, I referred to myself as a liberal with sanity.

Mr. President, the country we all love is hurting enormously, with huge unemployment.  Isn’t it possible to create work programs like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and spend monies on infrastructure for bullet trains, repairing roads and bridges that are falling down and other truly needed capital programs by creating what we don’t have now – a separate capital budget (which states and cities have) that would permit borrowing and pay the cost of a capital item over its expected life, instead of maintaining the single unified budget which the U.S. currently has?  I am not an economist, but shouldn’t that be considered?  The need for jobs with our unemployment rate in excess of 9 percent is universally accepted.

People everywhere are asking why don’t you call the Congress back from their unearned vacations to address the huge problems now facing the nation.  You can still win back the support of the public by publicly setting forth in detail your plan to address these enormous problems.  It should be a plan fashioned not on consensus, but your plan and if your political adversaries oppose it, so be it.  Then you must go over their heads to the vast public, appealing to its common sense, asking them to support you.  Take your plan into the next election and make your proposed programs the referendum on which the public will be voting in the presidential election of 2012.

Remember what Harry Truman did in 1948 with the do nothing Congress?  While Harry Truman is my political hero, you are far more eloquent than he was.  You can bring the nation to your side if you convince people that what you are asking them to do is to join hands in self-sacrifice, sharing the nation’s burden proportionately to their economic status.  We are a generous nation, a patriotic nation, a nation like no other in our diversity.  Today, we are so divided and feel leaderless.  You can bring us together and lead us to the promised land.

Mr. President, doesn’t it appear strange to you that the war in Afghanistan has been going on for ten years and this month of August, we have already sustained 51 deaths there?  We spend billions annually on the military budget.  Indeed, our military budget is equal in the aggregate to the military budgets of the next 17 nations.  I suspect the Taliban spends less than $10 million on its military, maybe $50 million annually, and yet, they have fought us to a standstill.  Shouldn’t we be getting out this year, instead of waiting for 2014, or as appears to be the case, staying permanently in a land where the people hate us?

Mr. President, we have been in Iraq for eight years.  We have spent hundreds of billions fighting the insurgents in Iraq.  Probably over a trillion dollars for the two wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – that are bleeding us, killing and injuring our young soldiers, ripping off the billions we send to rebuild their country, while our people are suffering in an economic crisis.  Within the past week, Iraq’s premier aligned Iraq with Syria and Iran, our declared enemies.  Syria is now engaged in killing its own citizens, shooting them down in the streets of Hama and other cities.  Does it make sense that you criticize Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and now our supposed ally, the new Iraq, is supporting the butcher of Syria?  While he is doing that, The Times reports we are negotiating with Iraq to stay past the end of this year with no date set for our leaving.

We are told Iraq needs our soldiers to protect it until Iraqi soldiers become able to do so.  Mr. President, what happened to the Iraqi soldiers’ ability?  That army eight years ago was the terror of the region.  Mr. President, our country is hurting.  Please take the actions needed to assure us someone is in charge.

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August 15, 2011

I watched the eight Republican candidates debate among themselves last week.  Many of the opinion-makers of our country, early on decided to attack many of these candidates, most of whom either are themselves card-carrying members or adherents of the Tea Party as well as members of the Republican Party.  All are seeking Republican Party support while advocating Tea Party positions on major issues, e.g., reducing or eliminating entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and slashing federal government expenditures.

Candidates like Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) have been described by some observers of the political scene as wackos or crazies.  I think those views are now changing.  I must admit here that I have used those words in describing the views of some candidates, but I won’t anymore.  The eight participants in the debate handled themselves extremely well.  While I was not persuaded by their arguments and views and remain a Democrat supporting many Democratic programs, I can well understand why they and their supporters demand changes in federal programs along the lines advocated by Tea Party philosophy.  Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll, coming in one percentage point ahead of Ron Paul.  Tim Pawlenty came in third and has withdrawn from the race.

Liberal philosophy has adopted the Keynesian position that in times of recession and depression, government must prime the pump and spend its way out to achieve better times.  The Tea Party view and that of the Conservative government of David Cameron in Great Britain adheres to the old-fashioned view that my mom often expressed:  “You don’t spend money you don’t have.”  That was my view when I was mayor of New York City and in my personal life.  I have two credit cards.  I have never paid charges on either of them over and above my actual purchases.  I am one of those customers the credit card companies hate and may lose money on, if they are dependent on the usurious rates of interest they receive from those using their credit cards as access to bank loans.

When I was Mayor, I supported then and do now a GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) balanced budget imposed by the state legislature requiring New York City to limit its operating budget to what was reasonable to expect the City to receive the year of the adopted budget.  The Tea Party believes in a balanced budget for the U.S. and wants to enact it into law by the adoption of a constitutional amendment.  Liberals are horrified with the idea.  My mother would have loved it.  It seems to me to make sense, provided there is an exception when the U.S. is at war.

We were a lower-middle class family when I grew up in Brooklyn.  Perhaps even poorer than we thought.  My father made $65 a week.  Our rent in Flatbush in 1941 was $65 a month – the then accepted ratio – and my parents were able to lead a reasonably decent lifestyle, bringing up three children and sending them to college.  I believe my parents values would be described as politically liberal.  Early on in my political career, I referred to myself as a liberal with sanity.

Mr. President, the country we all love is hurting enormously, with huge unemployment.  Isn’t it possible to create work programs like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and spend monies on infrastructure for bullet trains, repairing roads and bridges that are falling down and other truly needed capital programs by creating what we don’t have now – a separate capital budget (which states and cities have) that would permit borrowing and pay the cost of a capital item over its expected life, instead of maintaining the single unified budget which the U.S. currently has?  I am not an economist, but shouldn’t that be considered?  The need for jobs with our unemployment rate in excess of 9 percent is universally accepted.

People everywhere are asking why don’t you call the Congress back from their unearned vacations to address the huge problems now facing the nation.  You can still win back the support of the public by publicly setting forth in detail your plan to address these enormous problems.  It should be a plan fashioned not on consensus, but your plan and if your political adversaries oppose it, so be it.  Then you must go over their heads to the vast public, appealing to its common sense, asking them to support you.  Take your plan into the next election and make your proposed programs the referendum on which the public will be voting in the presidential election of 2012.

Remember what Harry Truman did in 1948 with the do nothing Congress?  While Harry Truman is my political hero, you are far more eloquent than he was.  You can bring the nation to your side if you convince people that what you are asking them to do is to join hands in self-sacrifice, sharing the nation’s burden proportionately to their economic status.  We are a generous nation, a patriotic nation, a nation like no other in our diversity.  Today, we are so divided and feel leaderless.  You can bring us together and lead us to the promised land.

Mr. President, doesn’t it appear strange to you that the war in Afghanistan has been going on for ten years and this month of August, we have already sustained 51 deaths there?  We spend billions annually on the military budget.  Indeed, our military budget is equal in the aggregate to the military budgets of the next 17 nations.  I suspect the Taliban spends less than $10 million on its military, maybe $50 million annually, and yet, they have fought us to a standstill.  Shouldn’t we be getting out this year, instead of waiting for 2014, or as appears to be the case, staying permanently in a land where the people hate us?

Mr. President, we have been in Iraq for eight years.  We have spent hundreds of billions fighting the insurgents in Iraq.  Probably over a trillion dollars for the two wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – that are bleeding us, killing and injuring our young soldiers, ripping off the billions we send to rebuild their country, while our people are suffering in an economic crisis.  Within the past week, Iraq’s premier aligned Iraq with Syria and Iran, our declared enemies.  Syria is now engaged in killing its own citizens, shooting them down in the streets of Hama and other cities.  Does it make sense that you criticize Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and now our supposed ally, the new Iraq, is supporting the butcher of Syria?  While he is doing that, The Times reports we are negotiating with Iraq to stay past the end of this year with no date set for our leaving.

We are told Iraq needs our soldiers to protect it until Iraqi soldiers become able to do so.  Mr. President, what happened to the Iraqi soldiers’ ability?  That army eight years ago was the terror of the region.  Mr. President, our country is hurting.  Please take the actions needed to assure us someone is in charge.

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August 15, 2011 I watched the eight Republican candidates debate among themselves last week.  Many of the opinion-makers of our country, early on decided to attack many of these candidates, most of whom either are themselves card-carrying members or adherents of the Tea Party as well as members of the Republican Party.  All are seeking [...]

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August 15, 2011 I watched the eight Republican candidates debate among themselves last week.  Many of the opinion-makers of our country, early on decided to attack many of these candidates, most of whom either are themselves card-carrying members or adherents of the Tea Party as well as members of the Republican Party.  All are seeking [...]

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The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by a minister, James Naismith, who believed that it would promote “muscular Christianity.” That game would be unrecognizable today with its peach baskets, players passing the ball but never dribbling (a minor adjustment never envisioned by Naismith) and final scores like 5-4. It wasn’t until Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century adopted the “ultimate city game”—and over the course of a few decades, from the ’20s to the ’50s, added innovations in play and strategy—that it went from one requiring brute strength to one that stressed skill and strategy. In their hands, basketball, first conceived as a simple, easy to play (but hard to master) game, became the crossover dribbling, three-point bombing sport that it is today.
Contrary to cultural stereotypes, early in the 20th century, most Jewish kids played basketball and played it well. The old schoolyard cliché that “any Jew great at sports was probably adopted” didn’t hold water. Those of us compelled to debunk the notion of Jews “without game” need look no further than the game of the ghettos during that golden era, when the sport was indeed considered the “Jewish game.” Because basketball requires very little in equipment at its bare root level, ghetto kids could improvise with makeshift paper balls shot through the lowest rung of the fire escape (backboards were unheard of). Leagues sponsored by YMHAs, yeshivas and synagogues flourished—in addition to the benefit of keeping kids off the corner and out of trouble, rabbis also realized that these teams served a greater purpose by ensuring that kids kept willingly coming back to shul.
Almost all Jewish neighborhoods had their own teams, rivalries were in fact fierce, and there was no question that the best ball in the era was played in New York and Philadelphia, the cities with the largest Jewish populations. For the chosen few, proficiency in shooting the rock could land one a college scholarship (often the only way a poor Jew could hope to attend) and provide a portal into middle class America. College basketball was one area of life where Jews were rarely denied the right to participate, certainly not the case in many other sports. Not surprisingly, many players stayed local, creating an era of elite college teams like City College of New York (CCNY), Long Island University (LIU), New York University and Temple. After a good college career, Jewish players on early semi-pro fives could earn as much as $5 a game, a veritable fortune back then.
During this era, so-called “Jew Ball” evolved—what was first used as a slur or, at best, a backhanded compliment, the term came to define the style of play that was later lauded as the “thinking man’s” game. Incorporating defense and constant motion with the aim of hitting the open man, it was the antithesis of the foul-plagued “football style” offense that prevailed in the early days. Indeed it was a style crucial to the later success of the college and pro game, and one that seminal coaches like Nat Holman and later his protégé Red Holzman, and later on his protégé Phil Jackson, would refine to perfection. Why, if that guy Naismith hadn’t come up with a few now-antiquated rules himself, you could almost say Jews invented modern basketball.
Just as stereotypes unfairly label today’s black players, many were foisted on the Jewish players in the ’20s and ’30s. Jew Ball provided an easy mark for journalists like Paul Gallico, the eminent sports editor of the NY Daily News who expressed the goy “excuse” in a 1930s column, stating that “the reason that basketball appeals to Hebrews is that the game places a premium on an alert scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart-aleckness.” Players who lost to all-Jewish teams whined that the shorter Jews had “God-given better balance and speed.” Genetic advantage or not, the fact is that in 1930, in the biggest college game of the year, with NYU facing CCNY (both teams were undefeated), 9 of the 10 starters were Jewish. How cool is that?
After the second World War, in an era when the hoopla of March Madness was as yet inconceivable and pro ball was still a curiosity, a handful of mostly eastern teams would battle in the once prestigious National Invitational Tournament (NIT) at Madison Square Garden in college basketball’s showcase event. NIT championship games, up until the ’50s, often included CCNY, LIU or St. John’s, schools that perennially produced some of the best and most innovative basketball in the nation and whose Jewish-laden rosters were the toast of the town. And when local Jewish fans checked their morning papers to find out how the rest of the best had fared, most looked first to see how the “Mighty Mites” of Yeshiva University had done against the other beasts of the east.
Those were the glory days for Jewish basketball, when players were still referred to as cagers (courts used to be ringed with wire or rope mesh to keep play continuous and protect players from abusive fans), when they shot and passed with two hands and when dunks were reserved for doughnuts—under the old rules, touching the rim was illegal. Sixty years before Air Jordans, $3 could get you a pair of black high-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars (and a hamburger and Coke for lunch), shorts were, well, short, and cheerleaders wore letter sweaters and ankle socks. Fans waved pennants, not Styrofoam fingers. Yes, it was a time when stars with names like Heyman, Schectman and Schayes pounded the hardwood, and the Jewish players were truly kings of the court.
By the late 1940s the heyday of the Jewish basketball star had diminished for a variety of cultural and demographic reasons, including a mass migration of middle-class Jews to the suburbs. The crushing blow was probably the point shaving scandal that rocked college basketball after the 1950 season. That many of the culprits were players from CCNY and NYU (who accepted money from gamblers to lose games on purpose or win games but by less than the point spread) proved to be a death knell for New York City college ball. But for what the game is now, we pay homage to its past with Chutzpah’s guide to Jewish basketball, A to Z.

By Len Canter

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The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by a minister, James Naismith, who believed that it would promote “muscular Christianity.” That game would be unrecognizable today with its peach baskets, players passing the ball but never dribbling (a minor adjustment never envisioned by Naismith) and final scores like 5-4. It wasn’t until Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century adopted the “ultimate city game”—and over the course of a few decades, from the ’20s to the ’50s, added innovations in play and strategy—that it went from one requiring brute strength to one that stressed skill and strategy. In their hands, basketball, first conceived as a simple, easy to play (but hard to master) game, became the crossover dribbling, three-point bombing sport that it is today.
Contrary to cultural stereotypes, early in the 20th century, most Jewish kids played basketball and played it well. The old schoolyard cliché that “any Jew great at sports was probably adopted” didn’t hold water. Those of us compelled to debunk the notion of Jews “without game” need look no further than the game of the ghettos during that golden era, when the sport was indeed considered the “Jewish game.” Because basketball requires very little in equipment at its bare root level, ghetto kids could improvise with makeshift paper balls shot through the lowest rung of the fire escape (backboards were unheard of). Leagues sponsored by YMHAs, yeshivas and synagogues flourished—in addition to the benefit of keeping kids off the corner and out of trouble, rabbis also realized that these teams served a greater purpose by ensuring that kids kept willingly coming back to shul.
Almost all Jewish neighborhoods had their own teams, rivalries were in fact fierce, and there was no question that the best ball in the era was played in New York and Philadelphia, the cities with the largest Jewish populations. For the chosen few, proficiency in shooting the rock could land one a college scholarship (often the only way a poor Jew could hope to attend) and provide a portal into middle class America. College basketball was one area of life where Jews were rarely denied the right to participate, certainly not the case in many other sports. Not surprisingly, many players stayed local, creating an era of elite college teams like City College of New York (CCNY), Long Island University (LIU), New York University and Temple. After a good college career, Jewish players on early semi-pro fives could earn as much as $5 a game, a veritable fortune back then.
During this era, so-called “Jew Ball” evolved—what was first used as a slur or, at best, a backhanded compliment, the term came to define the style of play that was later lauded as the “thinking man’s” game. Incorporating defense and constant motion with the aim of hitting the open man, it was the antithesis of the foul-plagued “football style” offense that prevailed in the early days. Indeed it was a style crucial to the later success of the college and pro game, and one that seminal coaches like Nat Holman and later his protégé Red Holzman, and later on his protégé Phil Jackson, would refine to perfection. Why, if that guy Naismith hadn’t come up with a few now-antiquated rules himself, you could almost say Jews invented modern basketball.
Just as stereotypes unfairly label today’s black players, many were foisted on the Jewish players in the ’20s and ’30s. Jew Ball provided an easy mark for journalists like Paul Gallico, the eminent sports editor of the NY Daily News who expressed the goy “excuse” in a 1930s column, stating that “the reason that basketball appeals to Hebrews is that the game places a premium on an alert scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart-aleckness.” Players who lost to all-Jewish teams whined that the shorter Jews had “God-given better balance and speed.” Genetic advantage or not, the fact is that in 1930, in the biggest college game of the year, with NYU facing CCNY (both teams were undefeated), 9 of the 10 starters were Jewish. How cool is that?
After the second World War, in an era when the hoopla of March Madness was as yet inconceivable and pro ball was still a curiosity, a handful of mostly eastern teams would battle in the once prestigious National Invitational Tournament (NIT) at Madison Square Garden in college basketball’s showcase event. NIT championship games, up until the ’50s, often included CCNY, LIU or St. John’s, schools that perennially produced some of the best and most innovative basketball in the nation and whose Jewish-laden rosters were the toast of the town. And when local Jewish fans checked their morning papers to find out how the rest of the best had fared, most looked first to see how the “Mighty Mites” of Yeshiva University had done against the other beasts of the east.
Those were the glory days for Jewish basketball, when players were still referred to as cagers (courts used to be ringed with wire or rope mesh to keep play continuous and protect players from abusive fans), when they shot and passed with two hands and when dunks were reserved for doughnuts—under the old rules, touching the rim was illegal. Sixty years before Air Jordans, $3 could get you a pair of black high-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars (and a hamburger and Coke for lunch), shorts were, well, short, and cheerleaders wore letter sweaters and ankle socks. Fans waved pennants, not Styrofoam fingers. Yes, it was a time when stars with names like Heyman, Schectman and Schayes pounded the hardwood, and the Jewish players were truly kings of the court.
By the late 1940s the heyday of the Jewish basketball star had diminished for a variety of cultural and demographic reasons, including a mass migration of middle-class Jews to the suburbs. The crushing blow was probably the point shaving scandal that rocked college basketball after the 1950 season. That many of the culprits were players from CCNY and NYU (who accepted money from gamblers to lose games on purpose or win games but by less than the point spread) proved to be a death knell for New York City college ball. But for what the game is now, we pay homage to its past with Chutzpah’s guide to Jewish basketball, A to Z.

By Len Canter

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The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by a minister, James Naismith, who believed that it would promote “muscular Christianity.” That game would be unrecognizable today with its peach baskets, players passing the ball but never dribbling (a minor adjustment never envisioned by Naismith) and final scores like 5-4. It wasn’t until Jewish immigrants [...]

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The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by a minister, James Naismith, who believed that it would promote “muscular Christianity.” That game would be unrecognizable today with its peach baskets, players passing the ball but never dribbling (a minor adjustment never envisioned by Naismith) and final scores like 5-4. It wasn’t until Jewish immigrants [...]

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If you live in NYC you had the opportunity to taste a French macaron (as they say it) free on French Macaron Day, initiated here on Sunday March 20 by Francois Payard, one of the foremost émigré chocolatiers from the motherland. In a world where a single one of these cookies costs between $2 and $5 (and they are nowhere more overpriced than at Maison du Chocolat, albeit a bastion of silken ganache and other treats, but still…), it seemed almost worth the drive in from my hinterlands in CT…until I remembered that gas is $4 a gallon and a round trip is about 7 gallons, best case scenario.

Just to show you how reality can never keep pace with trendy, macarons are already considered passé in some dessert circles. But still many people haven’t heard of, much less tasted a macaron, so it’s understandable that the New York Times would announce the freebie in the food section last Wednesday and then report on the events in today’s paper. The reporter even took the time to explain that a macaron is not a macaroon as in Passover coconut cookie macaroon. HOWEVER, I have two salient points to make. 1. One “o” or two, these are perfect for Passover because almonds substitute for flour the same way coconut does and 2. We are privileged to include Joan Nathan’s recipes for a variety of flavors here and in the new issue of Chutzpah.

Like the chocolate-covered ganache Chanukah gelt we brought you in our last issue, you can make this on your own. Don’t worry about the cracks the Times warns of. Having had the original at Laduree in Paris and those at Pierre Herme and other Jean-come lately’s, I can assure you that yours will melt in your mouth as easily as theirs. Of course, you haven’t really lived until you’ve sat down and eaten an entire box (as I typically do after begging any family member and friend who visits Paris to bring them back to me).  If you’ve got the money for shipping, you can now get them from Florian Bellanger’s madmacnyc.com, he of Fauchon in Paris, Le Bernardin in NYC and most recently Cupcake Wars. And they’re reasonably priced. Don’t scoff at the rose flavor until you try it. Sublime!

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If you live in NYC you had the opportunity to taste a French macaron (as they say it) free on French Macaron Day, initiated here on Sunday March 20 by Francois Payard, one of the foremost émigré chocolatiers from the motherland. In a world where a single one of these cookies costs between $2 and $5 (and they are nowhere more overpriced than at Maison du Chocolat, albeit a bastion of silken ganache and other treats, but still…), it seemed almost worth the drive in from my hinterlands in CT…until I remembered that gas is $4 a gallon and a round trip is about 7 gallons, best case scenario.

Just to show you how reality can never keep pace with trendy, macarons are already considered passé in some dessert circles. But still many people haven’t heard of, much less tasted a macaron, so it’s understandable that the New York Times would announce the freebie in the food section last Wednesday and then report on the events in today’s paper. The reporter even took the time to explain that a macaron is not a macaroon as in Passover coconut cookie macaroon. HOWEVER, I have two salient points to make. 1. One “o” or two, these are perfect for Passover because almonds substitute for flour the same way coconut does and 2. We are privileged to include Joan Nathan’s recipes for a variety of flavors here and in the new issue of Chutzpah.

Like the chocolate-covered ganache Chanukah gelt we brought you in our last issue, you can make this on your own. Don’t worry about the cracks the Times warns of. Having had the original at Laduree in Paris and those at Pierre Herme and other Jean-come lately’s, I can assure you that yours will melt in your mouth as easily as theirs. Of course, you haven’t really lived until you’ve sat down and eaten an entire box (as I typically do after begging any family member and friend who visits Paris to bring them back to me).  If you’ve got the money for shipping, you can now get them from Florian Bellanger’s madmacnyc.com, he of Fauchon in Paris, Le Bernardin in NYC and most recently Cupcake Wars. And they’re reasonably priced. Don’t scoff at the rose flavor until you try it. Sublime!

Start uga_filter:

If you live in NYC you had the opportunity to taste a French macaron (as they say it) free on French Macaron Day, initiated here on Sunday March 20 by Francois Payard, one of the foremost émigré chocolatiers from the motherland. In a world where a single one of these cookies costs between $2 and [...]

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If you live in NYC you had the opportunity to taste a French macaron (as they say it) free on French Macaron Day, initiated here on Sunday March 20 by Francois Payard, one of the foremost émigré chocolatiers from the motherland. In a world where a single one of these cookies costs between $2 and [...]

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