Forward.com

Art That Does Not Hide ItselfMost of the works that appear in the exhibit Idol Anxiety, at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, feature Christian and pagan content. But exhibit curator Aaron Tugendhaft credits the “heightened awareness” he developed from studying the Talmud as a child with helping him discover “valuable distinctions not seen by others” in the process of how objects avoid becoming idols…Read more

Willy Loman’s Jewish RootsYarmulkes are the new black in performances of “Death of a Salesman.” Inspired by the 1953 play, Traveling Jewish Theatre’s recent production of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning show featured Biff, Happy, Bernard and Charley wearing skullcaps at Willy Loman’s funeral. Biff and Happy, however, removed theirs immediately, “so it was very brief, as if they had to wear them for the ritual,” explained Aaron Davidman, artistic director of TJT.…Read more

Chasing the Passover BunnyThe Passover Haggadah is jam-packed with symbols of redemption from the Egyptian enslavement. But scholars are divided over the significance of one particularly unusual symbol: rabbit hunts.…Read more

Painting Apartheid’s SilhouetteWilliam Kentridge’s tapestry, “Porter Series: Géographie des Hebreux ou Tableau de la dispersion des Enfants de Noë” (2005), shows two silhouetted figures, with their respective heads replaced by a rotary telephone and a megaphone, walking over a map of southern Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The map mostly follows Genesis’s account of the post-Flood dispersion of Noah’s three children and 16 grandchildren, though it changes Shem’s son Arphaxad to Arphaxas and Japhet’s son Madai to Madal.…Read more

Hip Hop’s Unlikely PortraitistsTwo Jewish baby boomers — who live on opposite sides of the country and have never met — have both, on the advice of their sons, turned to the hip-hop community for artistic fodder. Although neither is comfortable being labeled a Jewish artist, New York-based painter Alex Melamid recognizes a major Jewish presence in hip hop, while David Scheinbaum, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., sees little connection between the two.…Read more