Kafka's Hebrew notebook in the Israeli National Library
Before his death Franz Kafka gave his archive Max Brod who published The Trial and Metamorphosis despite Kafka’s request to burn all his unpublished work. Max Brod came to Israel and brought the archive with him. After his death Max Brod’s secretary Esther Hoffe took the ownership of the treasure. Allegedly there are never published novels but no one knows for sure as it was never cataloged. Esther Hoffe’s daughter Eva and Ruth living in Israel sold part of the archive to a German research institute. No one knows exactingly what they sold or what they still keep in Israel in their safe deposit boxes. BBC got the story.
Burning of the Jews during the Black Death, Liber Chronicarum, 1493
Two Jewish treasures discovered in Colmar, Alsace region of France in the 19th century and recently in 1990s in Erfurt (former Eastern Germany) are on display in London at the Wallace Collection. The exhibition will be on the permanent display in the Old Synagogue of Erfurt, one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. Both treasures were hidden during the flight from the towns by the Jewish families. Guardian has a video review of the exhibition. Amazing jewelry and memory.
The Erfurt wedding ring with a bell inside. Many photographs show just the crown of this ring while the most unusual detail are the two folded hands on the bottom of the ring. The tops of the widow decorations are slightly bent inwards so a beautiful bride wouldn’t scratch herself. The stars form what appears to be a three-dimensional Star of David. I feel it is possible to imagine and bring to life the bride that was wearing the ring, bring back her flowing robes and her fleeting dreams. Hes sense of doubt and her generous acceptance. The fragrance and the love.
The image above is part of the Nuremberg Chronicle.
A clip of Slavoj Zizek talking about the classic musical The Sound of Music. I need to see the film again but let me think about this for a moment. The film was a Broadway remake, I wonder if there was an evolution of the imagery. A classic carnival persona is Mikhail Bakhtin’s cultural mirror image. Here Zizek claims that the mirror image itself is just a metaphor, it’s a bit of a cheap shot. Because in reality Nazis were impersonating the Jews all along. Look, here is the basic Nazi idea – the Jews want to dominate the world, the are in control of the European politics, music, art, banking, culture, etc. So instead of denouncing the very idea of the cross border domination, the Nazis said that’s exactly what we Germans want to do. We want to forcibly cross-dress as the Jews and dominate all aspects of the European culture and there could not be two nations playing this role at the same time. You see how it becomes easy to reverse engineer Nazis into Jews even in the film. Except Zizek is not telling you that this was always the Nazi ethos to become the Jews and the bucolic agricultural nationalism versus the cosmopolitan industrial, rootless domination was the central stage of the horrible conflicts. And of course Hitler himself being an Austrian from a small beautiful village makes the role reversal complete. Check it out: ►►►read more
Evanstonjew left a profound and moving comment on Alen Brill’s blog. By the way of a response. I also think about this “post holocaust” subject a lot. It seems there was this beautifully complex but dysfunctional culture that in many ways paved the way for its own demise. And the post traumatic response was an act of supreme stubbornness (how human), to take the worst dysfunctional aspects of the annihilated culture and kick it up a notch, make it even more dark and hopeless. Except that I don’t think this is a preamble to another Holocaust, this is Holocaust. I must say that I (like Zizek) hold that Gulag was worse than Holocaust, even for the Jews. So we must speak about the Gulag-Holocaust destruction. When the Fridiker said that America is nisht anderesh, he really meant macht do another Auschwitz and Gulag (the tragic acts of his own life that he deliberately repressed).
Lately when I see the herds of the black hat yingelach, I can’t escape the thoughts that they are hopelessly destroyed. If I can borrow a cliche in the Holocaust only the bodies died but for the current generation the souls are extinguished through the crude, inescapable indoctrination. I don’t see a difference from the outright sexual abuse, it kills the souls forever. And yes it is even worse than in the prewar Europe in this respect. I feel an eternal loss about this, it is as if we are forced to relive the Kafkaesque macabre tale.
What is peculiarity mussing from this discussion is the question about God, is he still there, is it all a game? Therefore the pintelle pointillistic reference is much appreciated since it was after all the Jewish post impressionist craft.
I weep easily, but this film in Hebrew is just hard to describe. Half a century in half an hour. Lodz, Frankfurt, Auschwitz, Arkhangelsk, Samarkand, Tel Aviv, Rego Park, Paris, Sinai. This film is a heartbreaking masterpiece.
The fatal story of a family discovered with detective precision based on the photos found in a garbage container in Tel Aviv. The film is strikingly minimalist, yet hauntingly beautiful. The dramatic suspense of the biblical fate punctuating one family, one of many. The unsettling proximity of the tragic century (the video is slow to load but well worth it, pay no attention to the commercials): Ynet – תעלומה במכולה הירוקה
There is this peculiar impression that till the enraged voters in Massachusetts sent a Republican to the Senate, no one, except the unemployed, remembered about the devastating structural changes in the economy. I am not talking about the Jews here specifically; perhaps this is a metaphor for any group. But I always wondered how the Holocaust or the Gulag happened in plain view of humanity but more importantly in plain view of the indifferent world Jewry.
First the layoffs, the crushing cleansing, when many firms cut people they would never dare to, if not for the fact that “everyone was doing it”. This is the middle class depression, more than a half of all jobs lost disappeared permanently. Jews are predominantly middles class and it’s natural that the community is hit particularly hard. Add to this the reality that many of the “working orthodox” feed off the economic margins that are now cut to the bone. For many families this is an unimaginable disaster and speaking of Holocaust, virtually no one is talking about this with the required urgency.
My friend tells me that perhaps the economic realm is not longer within the expertise of the communal organizations. But if this true than what is the rationale for a community that doesn’t have a charter for the mutual support? The communal institutions in service of the oligarchy unelected and permanently detached from the rank and file, accountable only to super rich. Occasionally easing their conscience by fundraising drives for the faraway lands from Haiti to Haifa, the further from home, the better.
Anecdotally many of my friends, who find themselves in the financial distress, tell me that if they try to share their misfortune with others there is a quick comeback and cutoff: “everyone is unemployed, everyone is losing a home, etc.” To be sure, not “everyone”, but there is callousness to this response as if no compassion, never mind a real help, is required, as if you are supposed to die in a plague.
Most people I know are traumatized more by the apathy than by the actual economic downfall. We expect and accept the financial risks and stumbles but the complete indifference by the people who claim a kinship is a life long trauma. And just like with the Great Depression there will be a new generation that doesn’t care and doesn’t remember. The life goes on but our connections to the fellow human beings will never be the same.
Marc Chagall, Apocalypse in Lilac: Capriccio, 1945
NYT – Small Museum Captures a Rare Chagall. Chagall made the sketch while in New York in 1945. The paper writes that this is a “gouache” although it looks like a watercolor. The drawing will be displayed for the first time in Ben Uri Gallery AKA The London Jewish Museum of Art. The name of the painting is a translation from Chagall’s own Russian inscription (wonder what it is in the original).
There is a ubiquitous for Chagall shtetl on the right, a cow, a fiddler, his trademark flying, till death do us part, lovers plus a Sefer Torah. And the falling clock. The crucifixion itself is equally offensive to both religions, but who is counting. The naked Jesus Chris is wearing a Tallis and Tefillin, might be annoying for the remaining Jews. The Christians on the other hand are used to the iconic naked depictions of the Christ but certainly not with the obviously female lower body (probably bleeding). As the Trinity is Kabbalistically recast into “The Father, The Son and The Holy Mother”.
Guardian – Police believe gang behind theft of Nazi slogan:
“A state of emergency was announced in Poland today involving tightened border controls and random police checks as a nationwide hunt was launched for the infamous bronze sign to the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz after it was stolen.”
photo via flickr/glennaa
Human Stature of Liberty. 18,000 officers and soldiers at Camp Dodge in Des Moines
The BBC series The Century of the Self created by Adam Curtis, first screened in 2002. Top reason to watch the series:
- Probably the most significant TV documentary ever made.
- It sheds light on Sigmund Freud’s American nephew Edward Bernays who created PR as we know it.
- The rare video footage of Sigmund Freud.
- It explains the obscure but powerful undercurrents of the American and world history.
This is a film of unprecedented significance. I don’t think I ever watched a documentary that is so enlightening and far reaching. Truly life changing in a meaningful way. ►►►read more
“July 22 1941. The girl next door is getting married. Anne Frank is leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It is the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film. At the time of her wedding, the bride lived on the second floor at Merwedeplein 39. The Frank family lived at number 37, also on the second floor. The Anne Frank House can offer you this film footage thanks to the cooperation of the couple.” ►►►read more
Previously unpublished photos have been revealed by 