Forward.com

In the Beginning, There Was VitebskIn the beginning, otherwise known as the year 988, Rus converted to Christianity, Vitebsk was founded and 1,000 years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, which was good. Today a backwater of fascist Belarus, Vitebsk had always been the place to change trains between Moscow and Kiev, its coordinates triangulating among the Russian and Baltic capitals of Vilnius and Riga. Due to this geography, and its three rivers — the Vitba and Luchesa flowing into the Dvina, which flows west toward the Baltic Sea — the city became a haven for traders, and as Jews could not work the land by law, Vitebsk became a haven for Jews. These Jewish merchants did what Jewish merchants have always done or should have, in all times, in all countries and cultures: They gave birth to Jewish artists, then supported their careers. As the Russian Revolution fired imaginations before the Bolsheviks turned repressive and, later, Stalin snuffed them with the gulag, these Vitebsk Jewish artists, and those Russians who gathered around them, re-envisioned the visual world.
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If He Had World Enough and TimeA tip for the brainy, leisurewear-oriented hipster: Type George Steiner’s name into Amazon.com’s search engine, and you’ll find, among his books of cultural and literary criticism, a novel about Hitler, a memoir titled “Errata: An Examined Life” and, of especial curiosity, a T-shirt emblazoned with a cherry-red heart that’s framed by the words “I Love George Steiner.”
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What if Hitler Were a Jewish Supremacist?‘The biggest mistake fascism made was to turn against the Israelite,” a character says in Arnon Grunberg’s new novel, “The Jewish Messiah.” “If fascism had absorbed the Israelite, if fascism had said to the Israelite: Come, let us join forces, then fascism would still be a vital movement, it would be the most important movement in Europe.”
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