For our Passover Seder, we ask people to share a story from their own experience or imagination that rhymes somehow with the exodus from slavery. Here’s how we put the prompt this time: This year, we’re feeling like Mitzrayim is here and our challenge is to allow something far better to push through and be …
Twenty years ago, my friend Daniel Burstyn introduced me to an exercise created for Passover, the Jewish holiday which this year begins on the evening of 12 April. The holiday commemorates the exodus from slavery in Egypt (“Mitzrayim” in Hebrew, which also means “straits” or “narrow places”). The tradition is to retell the story as …
I’ve had the same conversation with many friends in the last few days: what is wrong with the Democrats? Why aren’t they responding to the Trump-Musk emergency with the speed and energy required to stop them from (to use Steve Bannon’s repugnant language) “flooding the zone with shit” at “muzzle velocity” and drowning the body …
Last week I completed a painting I’ve been working on for many weeks. Its name comes from the text written on its face: “Over every blade of grass an angel hovers, whispering, ‘Grow, grow.’” This isn’t even close to an exact translation of the Talmudic text from Bereshit Rabbah 10.6 on which it is based, …