Books

'The Life of Our Times'

Or infusing real life into real acting

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Those interested in American theater must at some point have a reckoning with Lee Strasberg, the "father" of Method acting and, as a founder of the Actors Studio, one of the outsized figures in the history of performing arts in the 20th century. No matter where you fall when it comes to his achievement -- whether you see him as...

Books

'Qualities of Art'

That's when architecture begins to say something about the world

By:

Robert Leiter

Why Architecture Matters is the title of Paul Goldberger's entry in the Yale University Press series that asks a specialist to explain the importance of a particular field and why it should still matter to contemporary individuals. In this instance, if the title were a question -- Why Does Architecture Matter? or Why Should Architecture Matter? -- Judaism would once...

Books

Whatever Happened to the Shtetl?

An analysis of Eastern European life and its fate in the Holocaust

By:

Robert Leiter

Yehuda Bauer is acknowledged as one of the supreme Holocaust historians of our time, and the appearance from Yale University Press of The Death of the Shtetl only reaffirms that status, while deepening the scope of his accomplishment. The book tells an immensely complex tale with the clarity and simplicity of a master craftsman. The work's intricacies stem from the...

Books

A Different Life

The tale of two immigrant populations, and their intersection

By:

Robert Leiter

I can think of no more fitting book to turn to on Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, than Haim Sabato's From the Four Winds . The plot -- if it can be called that -- of this obviously autobiographical novel is simplicity itself. This is the author's fourth work of fiction -- following Aleppo Tales, Adjusting Sights and The Dawning...

Books

'An Obvious and Exemplary Victim'

By:

Robert Leiter

The title is a shocker: A Jew Must Die. When the book first appeared in the mails, I thought that the small-scale paperback -- so different in shape and design than most books I usually receive -- might be some anti-Semitic tract, and that the title had been chosen to be purposefully scandalous, and to frighten and provoke. But the...