Staff Picks: ‘The Velvet Underground,’ ‘The Nazi’s Granddaughter’ and Tammy Faye
What we’re reading—and watching—this week.
Visual Moment | Man Ray in Paris
Walking through the exhibition of artist Man Ray’s photographs at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is like stepping into a time machine.
The Ten Commandments of Film
When asked at a press conference about his faith, French director Francoise Truffaut’s answer was simple: “Films are my religion.” Here are ten films, each with a thematic connection to one of the Ten Commandments.
A Coming-of-Age Adventure at Sea
When three teenage Maccabi Haifa soccer fans hear that their team’s upcoming Champions League Playoffs game against Liverpool FC will be moved from Israel to Cyprus, they are distraught. Unable to afford the $550 to buy an airplane ticket, they are nonetheless determined to see the match. So, they need to come up with a plan—fast.
In Graphic Novel ‘Whistle,’ Jewish Guilt Is a Superpower
In Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero, writer E. Lockhart and artist Manuel Preitano make the case for Jewish guilt with DC Comics’ first Jewish superhero in nearly 20 years.
Becoming Dr. Ruth with Ruth K. Westheimer and Tovah Feldshuh
Ruth K. Westheimer has led a remarkable life. Long before she became a world-famous sex therapist, she escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport to Switzerland and was a teenage sharpshooter in the Haganah. As a young woman she studied and taught at the university in Paris before making her way to the United States—and “becoming Dr Ruth.” She is in conversation about how to live life to the fullest with Tovah Feldshuh, the six-time Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor who plays her in the Off-Broadway show Becoming Dr Ruth. Westheimer and Feldshuh are joined by Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein.
Broadway’s Bruce Sabath Remembers Stephen Sondheim
Broadway actor and singer Bruce Sabath reflects on his relationship with Stephen Sondheim, who died on November 26.
Book Review | The Politics of Paranoia, Then and Now
Almost a half-century before Donald Trump signed on to the fraudulent notion that President Barack Obama’s American citizenship and constitutional legitimacy were suspect, Robert Welch (1899-1985) reached an equally alarming conclusion about the president of his day, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Book Review | Beneath the City of God
The rabbinic tradition speaks of a Jerusalem above and a Jerusalem below.
Poem | Portrait of the Poet’s Grandmother (Lighting Candles)
In many Jewish homes, lighting candles at dusk marks a shift to sacred time, the moment when the Sabbath starts—or a holiday, a yahrzeit.
Staff Picks: Milan Kundera, ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ and Post-War Germany
What we’re reading—and watching—this week.
Fiction | Polonaise
The music of Chopin brings together a mysterious young Hungarian Holocaust survivor and an American music student. But just when romance is in the air, he vanishes.