Forward.com

French-BredIn the summer of 2005, the suburbs of Paris went up in flames. Television screens and newspapers were filled with images of frustrated Arab and African youths, most often the unemployed children or grandchildren of immigrants, burning and slashing the already dour infrastructure around them. It was a sight that many observers thought mirrored the frustration seen throughout the Middle East. In any case, the riots in the French suburbs were the sign of a vexing European crisis.…Read more

Epic Encyclopedia Turns a Page in Study of Jewish Eastern EuropeWhat is Jewish Eastern Europe? A geographical space, or a frame of mind? The eternal homeland of Ashkenazic Jewry, or simply its birthplace? A field of academic inquiry, or just a touchstone for nostalgia?…Read more

Picturing Today’s ConversosIn northern New Mexico’s Sandoval County, there is a tombstone of a World War II veteran in a cemetery nestled in the desert brush. The name of the man, who was born in 1921 and died in 1980, is Adonay P. Gutierrez, and it is engraved on the stone below a cross. Nine different Native American communities reside in the surrounding counties, and even if cemetery visitors see his cross before his name, this lone Jew lies among them.…Read more

Israeli Artist Branches Out in LondonIsraeli artist Zadok Ben-David has been approved by the Westminster City Council to display his “Four Seasons” sculpture in London, at Hanover Square. The sculpture depicts four metal trees and is sponsored by Sotheby’s of London. It comes on the heels of the artist’s similar installation on the grounds of the Chatsworth House, the ancestral hall of the Dukes of Devonshire located southwest of Manchester.…Read more

Picturing the ‘Problem From Hell’When you look at a photograph that depicts an act of violence — or, in the case of Lane H. Montgomery’s new photography book, “Never Again, Again, Again” (Ruder Finn), an act of genocide — you might assume that the photographer took a substantial amount of time to frame, say, a heap of murdered Tutsis drying out on wooden planks, or a horrific scene in which a Serb soldier is kicking a Bosnian woman while she lay bleeding on the ground. “What people might not realize is that many of these photos are quick shots, taken when I had that second to jam my arm into this windowsill or climb to that viewpoint,” said Montgomery, who edited the book and contributed some of her own photographs.…Read more