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A Living Lens: From Science to Art in Two Generations

Next month, the office of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer will host a show in its gallery of work by Lynda Caspe. In addition to being a respected painter and sculptor, Caspe recently wrote to inform me that she is also the granddaughter of one of the Forverts’s first science editors, Dr. Abraham Caspe.

Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s Arts & Culture editor, is touring the country, speaking about her new book, “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward.”

A Living Lens: The Forverts Reunited Shlomo Artzi’s Family, Too

Last week, I posted the story of how the Forverts reunited Israeli writer Nava Semel’s family. What I didn’t know then — but do now, thanks to our archivist extraordinaire, Chana Pollack — is that Semel is the sister of folk-rock star Shlomo Artzi. Chana also passed on this great video of Artzi singing in Yiddish with a bunch of Hasidim:

Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s Arts & Culture editor, is touring the country, speaking about her new book, “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward.”

A Living Lens: The Forverts Reunited Nava Semel’s Family

From the mailbag: I just received a note from Israeli author and journalist Nava Semel. Ms. Semel was writing to alert us to the publication of her new book, “Israisland,” but she included a story that she rightly surmised might interest me.

“My American grandfather found out that his abandoned son survived the Holocaust through an article in the Yiddish Forward in 1946,” she wrote. “My late father Itzhak Artzi was then a young Zionist leader and he gave an interview to Forward correspondent in Paris. The interview was published in New York and my grandfather saw it. Forward is indeed responsible for uniting my family and ending the split.”

Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s Arts & Culture editor, is touring the country, speaking about her new book, “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward.”

A Living Lens: A Globe-Trotting Rabbi

I received a lovely note today from Dov Burt Levy, a columnist for the Jewish Journal North of Boston, who passed along the review he wrote of “A Living Lens.” Readers should, of course, peruse the whole piece, but there’s a lovely tidbit at the end that I can’t help but highlighting:

Because the Jewish world is so large and I was born a long time after 1890, I hardly expected to find anyone in the book I knew personally. However, I was taken aback (and delighted) to find on page 203, my rabbi during my Air Force service in Paris in 1955-56. Captain Harry Z. Schreiner was pictured greeting two army nurses after Rosh Hashanah services in Korea. It’s a small world.

Indeed.

Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s Arts & Culture editor, is touring the country, speaking about her new book, “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward.”

A Living Lens: Her Father Finally Meets Liz Taylor

From the mailbag: “Dear Ms. Newhouse: I recently received a phone call from a family friend that he had received a copy of A Living Lens as a gift,” wrote Anne Feferman of South Bend, Ind. “To his astonishment, he found a picture of my father, Henry Feferman, on page 234. In the photo, he is standing with Father Cavanaugh, who was President of the University of Notre Dame, and presenting him with artwork by Steinholtz. I was totally taken aback, only to be further shocked when I saw his photo was directly across from a picture of Elizabeth Taylor — whom he adored.”

Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s Arts & Culture editor, is touring the country, speaking about her new book, “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life From the Pages of the Forward.”