On the pleasures and terrors of accepting the rules
| 12:03 PM Feb 20, 2009
One of the most resplendent moments in Kafka’s The Trial is a short parable, spoken to Joseph K by a shifty priest.
It tells the story of a country bumpkin who wishes to gain entry into the law, but discovers that the law is guarded by a hulking man with a thin black beard and ...
Nazis in the workplace, what Kafka's writings presaged
| 12:11 PM Dec 4, 2008
Throughout the 1960s, when Kafka’s work was circulating in Czech in samizdat editions, Prague’s dissident writers would call the Prague castle, throne of the immemorial Czech kings, Das Schloß—”The Castle”—in reference to the circuitous delays, follies, and bureaucratic oppressions, of the communist period. While The Trial found its ending in officework, The Castle began in ...
Sam Lipsyte’s novel The Ask and Noah Baumbach’s movie Greenberg breathe new life into the figure of the shlemiel
Salo trades his horse for a foul-mouthed Jewess
Though weak with hunger, Salo takes a stand
On the eve of the Oscars, an endorsement of ‘The White Ribbon’
A new documentary discusses the legacy of a Nazi filmmaker with his heirs
The anti-‘Edge of Darkness’ email your relatives are forwarding
There are more similarities between Jewish music and Jewish food than meets the ear
At 86, blind and housebound, Fugs frontman Tuli Kupferberg is still dispensing crass words of wisdom
Two bands cultivate the ‘Afro-Judaic’ aesthetic
Making the web’s greatest Hanukkah film
The Fox cult hit ‘Glee’ is about outcasts and Broadway—so naturally it offers a Jewish storyline
Wallace Shawn on being Jewish—onscreen and off
At 50, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beth Sholom synagogue still glimmers—leaks and all
While trying on new artistic hat, artist develops series of paper coats
A new exhibition explores the overlapping worlds of Christian and Jewish art in medieval Spain
How Russian-Jewish émigrés are changing the face of competitive ballroom dance
How a latter-day vaudevillian from Kansas City got himself to speak perfect Yiddish
As it progressed, the playwright’s autobiographical trilogy grew more dark—and more true
