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When the curation staff at ANU-The Museum of the Jewish People gave Shoshana Mandel, a textile conservator, the original robe and wig worn by Shloyme Mikhoels when he played the lead role in King Lear at the Moscow State Jewish Theater nearly 90 years ago – courtesy of the Israel Goor Theatre Archives and Museum in Jerusalem – she could hardly catch her breath. Until the age of 10, Mandel lived in the Moscow State Jewish Theater compound. She was the only child of parents who were theater employees and remembers Mikhoels primarily as “Uncle Mikhoels” – a short and hyperactive[…]

Ever since the old Beit Hatfutsot Museum was opened in 1978, the legendary spirits of its founders, Abba Kovner, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Dr. Meyer Weisgal and many others, have been hovering above its walls. All of them were men, may we be spared such a fate, all of them were of Ashkenazi origin, heaven forbid, and all of them were ardent followers of the old Jewish story. And what is the old Jewish story? The old permanent exhibition at the museum began with the Arch of Titus and the destruction of the Second Temple and ended after two thousand years[…]

For over 50 years, a framed photograph decorated a wall in the Upper West Side apartment of Max Fuchs and his wife Naomi in New York. The photograph shows an American soldier draped in a tallit – prayer shawl – who is praying before a group of Allied Forces soldiers, standing in the middle of a desolate field across from the ruins of an old synagogue. The photograph also shows an NBC correspondent holding a microphone in front of the solider, with black clouds of war peeping out from behind him. When Max Fuchs, the soldier in the picture, was[…]

Jewish women in Morocco uttered her name with awe and admiration, pilgrims visit her tombstone in Fez to these days, almost two centuries after her death, and hundreds of poems, lamentations, piyyutim, essays and books in numerous languages were written about her. But Sol Hachuel is still a mystery. Was Sol Hachuel – Solica – a hasty teen whose one mistake costed her with her life? Was she a breath taking beautiful martyr, tangled up in a romantic affair which led to her decapitation at the age of 15 for “rida” – the sin of heresy in Islam? One fact[…]

The question of induction has kept scientists busy since the dawn of science. If you see a white swan, and then another white swan, does this mean all swans are white? How can one establish a scientific claim basing on even a large number of observations? What if the millionth observation will result in a different outcome? The black swan, discovered in Australia in the 17th century and announced the national bird in 1973, is a common metaphor in science, pointing at the weakness of the induction question. Many scientists tried to solve the black swan issue. One of them[…]

Though Gnosticism was introduced in the Mediterranean basin 2000 years ago, splitting the world into the kingdom of good and the kingdom of evil, one 20th century man, a one-time Jewish genius personified this dualism in the most extreme, almost incomprehensible manner. On the one hand, there was Dr. Fritz, laureate of the Nobel prize in chemistry, the scientist who picked “Bread from the Air” after discovering how to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen, thus saving the world from famine. Then on the other hand there was Mr. Haber, the scientist whose name is directly associated with the first use of[…]

Some stories are so remarkably fantastic, that all you wish is to find out whether they are real or fake. So when I interviewed Judit Polgár in a Café in Budapest a few years back, I had to ask her, was it true that she never attended school? Indeed, she confirmed that she, like her two elder sisters before her, attended school for less than one week a year, only so that they could take the exams. She did go to kindergarten – but only for a slightly longer period. The story of Polgár and her sisters has captured the[…]

It was a cold winter day in January 1880. Escorted, as always, by his dogs Bummer and Lazarus, Joshua Norton was having his daily walk in the streets of San Francisco, wearing his military suite decorated with medals, a large sword on his belt, and a peacock feathers hat on his head. Upon reaching the corner of Dupont and California, after saluting back a few fans who greeted him – he dropped dead right there on the sidewalk. California, the golden state, was grief stricken. “The king is dead!” the headline of the San Francisco Chronicle declared, while the competing[…]

Admired by Frank Sinatra, adored by Judy Garland, and defined by Bing Crosby as his spiritual father, we can safely state that much like Russian literature came to the world from the creases of Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, as Dostoevsky said, the American entertainment tradition came out of the mythological black suite of Al Jolson, who died this week 70 years ago. Bob Dylan, even though born half a century after “Jolie”, said Jolson was “somebody whose life I can feel”. Did Dylan feel this way because both of them were artists, sons of immigrants, who, while eagerly trying to spot[…]

After a choppy and bizarre season, as the whole sports was hit by the pandemic, then a well-organized bubble in Orlando, the NBA has reached its annual pinnacle. And at a time of year when players are usually preparing for the new season, the finals series has begun featuring the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat. Typically to our era the Jewish involvement in the finals is at the higher ranks.  Like the owner of the heat Micky Arison and league commissioner Adam Silver, who will award the trophy to the winning team. The last time a Jewish player featured[…]