Art that Hints at Big Questions

The Forward–April 23, 2009
Israeli sculptor Micha Ullman likes to refer to his art as “offerings” — works that people can choose to accept or not. He doesn’t believe in forcing anything on anyone, and especially not art.
“It’s an attitude to life,” he said in an interview in his Ramat Hasharon studio, which is neatly packed [...]

The Aesthetics of Violence Examined

The Forward-Feb. 17, 2009
Haifa — Following the collapse of the Twin Towers in 2001, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was caught musing that the event was “the greatest work of art that is possible,” a statement that provoked widespread outrage and led to the cancellation of several concerts of his work. Though New York Times music [...]

Of Giants’ Robes and Dwarvish Thieves

The Forward–November 26, 2008
The Clothes on Their Backs
By Linda Grant
Scribner, 304 pages, $27.50 (hardcover), $14 (trade paperback).
Toward the end of Philip Roth’s poignant story “Eli the Fanatic,” Eli, exhausted by his fruitless efforts to get a Hasidic yeshiva to leave his nicely acculturated Jewish neighborhood, decides to adopt a different strategy. He wraps his Brooks [...]

The Art of War

Forward–October 2, 2008
Two years ago in the midst of the Second Lebanon War, the popular French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy, was sent to Israel by the New York Times Magazine to “ponder, discuss and travel” as the title of his piece suggested. The result, an essay defending the country’s military confrontation against vociferous critics, was [...]