Latest news with #JewishMuseum
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
The Mancunian Way: Ding-dong in a Munich nightclub
'We are homeless' reads the sign fashioned from a scratty bit of cardboard attached to a bright blue tent in Stockport town centre. This makeshift shelter is currently home to a family who came to the UK last year from Iraq. Mohammed, his wife and their 18-year-old son have been sleeping rough outside the offices of social housing provider Stockport Homes. READ MORE: Driver dies after crashing into wall in Greater Manchester READ MORE: Girl, 13, 'topples into reservoir in front of her dad while taking photo' "We need help, it's not safe here. I've been here for ten days, my wife is sick, we can't stay like this,' Mohammed told local democracy reporter Declan Carey. The family - and another rough sleeper in a tent next to theirs - are among a growing number of people sleeping rough in the town. The council, grappling with major housing shortages, expects to spend up to £1m on hotel accommodation this year - up from £180,000 three years ago. Stockport Homes say Mohammed's family was offered accommodation but turned it down because it was outside the borough - a situation that would leave them in temporary accommodation. You can read more about the family's predicament here. Yehudis Fletcher always felt 'comfortable' in Manchester as a child visiting from Scotland - joining her grandmother on day trips into town and to the Jewish Museum. But when she moved to the city as a teenager to live with a Jewish scholar - and subjected to horrific abuse at his hands - she was silenced by the city's Orthodox Jewish, or charedi, community. Now a convicted paedophile, Grynhaus sexually assaulted Yehudis repeatedly, stealing into her bedroom at night and forcing himself upon her. Young and shielded from sexual ideas and language through her religion, she didn't even have the words to describe what was happening to her. In her new memoir Chutzpah, she explores her faith, sexuality and the community. She has been speaking to reporter Nicole Wootton-Cane about her horrific ordeal at the hands of a man she thought she could trust. It's a harrowing but worthwhile read. One of Manchester's biggest developers has been accused of using 'different figures' to avoid having to build affordable housing. Renaker, which has built many of Manchester's skyscrapers, has repeatedly successfully argued the schemes it has put forward would not make enough profit to be 'viable' if it included affordable housing as per council policy. However, a court heard this week that the developer allegedly uses a 'different set of figures' when seeking loans with 'modest' interest rates. It comes as the Greater Manchester Combined Authority defends itself against claims brought to the Competition Appeal Tribunal that it loaned £120m to Renaker through its Housing Investment Loan Fund with 'no lawful or proper process'. Politics writer Joseph Timan has all the details here. "Good luck with that," says Roger Carrington, on hearing that Warburton Toll Bridge may have to close. For more than 160 years travellers have been paying to cross the iron and stone bridge on the south west edge of Trafford. It's now a well-used route for drivers heading to and from the M6 and M62. But Peel Port Group say it may have to close permanently unless 'selfish and irresponsible' drivers of lorries, tractors and other HGVs stop crossing it in spite of current weight restrictions during a £6.5m upgrade. The long-standing 12p toll has been temporarily removed. But the threat of closure and a planned increase in the toll to £1 once work is complete hasn't gone down well with villagers in Warburton, as reporter Damon Wilkinson discovered. American pop-rockers Haim have chosen an unusual spot for their latest photoshoot. It appears the cover art for their new release features an area near Piccadilly Gardens, with Don Tacos and One Piccadilly Gardens quite easily recognisable in the background. It's sent fans into a frenzy with one declaring: 'Omg not near Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester take me back to uni lmao!' While another said: 'What the hell are you doing on Portland Street? I am beside myself.' What's On writer Adam Maidment has been scouring the details of the shot, including a W H Smith bag and a reference to a very noughties celeb couple. Drought: The Environment Agency has declared a drought in the north-west of England. Details here. Move on: Stockport council's new leader has demanded action rather than words on the town's call for a Metrolink stop. Mark Roberts said plans to expand the Metrolink network to Stockport need to move forward. Affordability: Despite efforts to build more homes, property in Salford is becoming 'less affordable', the city's mayor has said. Paul Dennett has warned that the cost of living in Salford is being pushed further out of reach for some of the city's residents as prices continue to surge. Tickets: Oldham Athletic FC will play Southend at Wembley on Sunday - the first time the club has visited the iconic stadium in over 30 years. But there are concerns Lactics fans will miss out due to ticket allocations for the game. More here. Friday: Light rain changing to overcast by late morning. 19C. Roads: A572 St Helens Road southbound, Leigh, closed due to roadworks from A578 Twist Lane to Bonnywell Road. Until June 30. A6 Chapel Street westbound, Salford, closed due to long-term roadworks from A6041 Blackfriars Road to A34 New Bailey Street. Until January 19. A58 Park Road in both directions closed due to water main work at Westhoughton until May 30. 'The infamous Oasis 'ding-dong' in a Munich nightclub that cost Liam Gallagher €50,000 and his two front teeth'. How's that for a headline on a story I am definitely going to read. As you can imagine, the copy is littered with Liam's usual fruity parlance, so look away if you are easily offended. Otherwise, read on.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Ben Shahn's Social Realist Art Feels Relevant Again in Landmark Survey
With some artists, there's one work that seems to capture their essential achievement. In the long-overdue retrospective now at the Jewish Museum in New York, the entire artistic project of the American painter Ben Shahn comes clear in a single fascinating painting from 1940 called 'Contemporary American Sculpture.' It depicts a gallery at the Whitney Museum hosting sculptures from that year's survey of the nation's artists — except that Shahn, left out of the Annual, reimagines the walls surrounding those stylized modern works as covered in his own realist paintings. Those show scenes of everyday life during the Great Depression — decrepit workers' housing; a farmer by his shack; poor Black women at a welfare hospital — depicted as though the Whitney's walls have been pierced to reveal the all-too-real world out beyond. It recalls how Renaissance murals pierced church walls to let in the more-real world of the Bible. 'Contemporary American Sculpture' captures what's at stake in the most potent works in 'Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity,' as this revelatory survey is called. Those works use the time-honored art of painting to make the modern world, and its signature troubles, as present as Shahn can manage. The effect is gripping, and feels utterly relevant for the troubled moment we are living in now. For a decade or so on either side of World War II, Shahn's achievements made him an art star, earning him a major show at the Museum of Modern Art and honors including a place in the American Pavilion of the 1954 Venice Biennale, shared with the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning. But it was de Kooning and his ilk who went on to dominate the art world; as Cold War reaction took hold, Shahn, a dedicated leftist, saw a slow but unbroken decline in his critical fortunes. There has barely been an uptick since. The Jewish Museum show is Shahn's first notable survey in the United States since one at the same museum in 1976. Featuring 175 artworks and objects, photos by Shahn and his peers as well as illuminating ephemera, it was organized abroad, at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid, where it was a big hit in 2023; the curator Laura Katzman had to work hard to find an American museum to take it. Shahn was raised in immigrant Brooklyn, where his family, who were Jewish, had landed in 1906, when he was 8. They were fleeing deprivation, antisemitism and oppression in their native Lithuania, then under Russian rule. Shahn's father, a socialist and anti-czarist, had been forced into exile in Siberia. In the United States, the Shahns still had such struggles that young Ben had to drop out of high school to help fund the household. He landed in a lithographer's workshop, where he mastered the fundamentals of visual art. But his career as an artist took a while to jell, as he attended various courses in various places — New York University, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., the City College of New York. In the 1920s, Shahn, supported by a hard-working wife, Tillie Goldstein, was able to take in the high points of old master and modern art across Europe. (He arranged a meeting with Picasso but got cold feet and called it off.) By 1933, Shahn was back in New York, assisting the great Diego Rivera on his infamous mural for Rockefeller Center, soon hacked off the wall because of its portrait of Lenin. Unlike his mentor, Shahn never quite subscribed to communist doctrine, though he shared the movement's egalitarian aims. For a solo show at the prestigious Downtown Gallery in New York, in 1939, Shahn portrayed scenes from the saga of Tom Mooney, a labor leader falsely imprisoned for a 1916 bombing, who wasn't released until the year of Shahn's exhibition. If the images in the survey feel more like news than comment, that's partly because we can sense the press photos Shahn used as his sources. Though his paintings themselves aren't close to photorealistic — his technique can be potently slapdash — their subjects have the verve of seeming caught on the fly. His image of two perjurers who helped convict Mooney has the strange perspective of a wide-angle lens, as does its newspaper source, on view at the Jewish Museum alongside other documentation that gives insight into Shahn's art. The exhibition includes an earlier series on the controversial 1921 trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants executed for murder despite flimsy evidence. Shahn's painting of the two handcuffed men is cropped weirdly tight; we see that it echoes a source photo that had been cropped the same way, to save space on the printed page. Shahn borrows the feel of a photograph's direct observation to make his painted subjects seem more directly observed by us. In the mid-1930s, he took up the camera himself, as part of a New Deal project to document Depression hardships. His photographs in this show stand up fine against nearby ones by famous colleagues like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, but few of his shots were made public. Instead, Shahn used them as sources for the New Deal murals he was soon making — the show mostly includes them as studies — and then for many of his later paintings. The vast majority of photographs in Shahn's day were black-and-white and very small. They couldn't have the sheer presence of scenes at life scale, in full color. That had been the territory once staked out in the 'history paintings' of the European old masters; in the best works in the show, Shahn channels the potent 'reality effect' of those paintings, but uses it to capture distinctly modern subjects and social ills, and the modern look of a photographed world. That achievement comes especially clear in the colorful posters he made during World War II for the American Office of War Information, which show figures, at life size or larger, suffering under the Nazis and their partners. Those figures might as well be Christian martyrs on the walls of a Renaissance church. (Shahn reworked one poster about Nazi slave labor into a painting called '1943 AD,' in which a stretch of barbed wire becomes a crown of thorns on one of the enslaved.) Shahn's vision was too potent for the Office of War Information: It seems to have released only two of his posters. A bit later in the 1940s, working for the Congress of Industrial Organizations — a major confederation of unions — he created other posters that used the same effects to champion causes such as colorblind hiring and voting rights. Welders — one Black and one white — loom above us in this show, as if they were just the other side of the museum wall. Unfortunately, in the decade or so before his death in 1969, Shahn could seem more interested in modern aesthetics than in modern people and their plights. His pictures became palimpsests of allusive symbols, reheating modern styles from Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso. Toward the end of this show, we miss the immediacy of Shahn's earlier pictures, with their close ties to an observed world. Instead, we're offered illustrations of moral themes and spiritual subjects that can read like vaporous musings. What Shahn couldn't have realized, as he turned away from his potent visions of the 1930s and 40s, was that they would find new purchase almost a century later, when once again we face issues of racial injustice, and what our nation might do about it, and prosecutions that can seem to serve politics, not justice. Back in 1939, in an essay for Shahn's Downtown Gallery show, Rivera called his former assistant 'magnificent,' and said his paintings captured 'a complete portrait' of the reality Shahn had grown up in. At the Jewish Museum, a century later, they seem to offer a portrait of our reality, too.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
As antisemitism rises, these are the best ways to keep Jews safe
Regarding The Post's May 23 front-page article 'Death, shock at Jewish museum': This is a somber time during Jewish American Heritage Month: Two young professionals from the Israeli Embassy were shot and killed last week as they were leaving an event for diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. I think it's worth discussing a factor that does not seem to have come up much in discussions of the shootings: visible security at the venue.
Jordan News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Jordan News
Two Israeli Embassy Staff Killed in Washington - Jordan News
Two Israeli Embassy Staff Killed in Washington Two employees of the Israeli embassy were killed in a shooting near an event at the Jewish Museum in Washington on Wednesday evening (local time), in an incident that U.S. President Donald Trump described as an act of "antisemitism." اضافة اعلان The two victims, a man and a woman, were shot and killed in an area near the museum, which was hosting a reception for young diplomats organized by the American Jewish Committee at the time. Washington, D.C. police said the shooter was identified as Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old from Chicago, Illinois. Authorities stated that he had no prior criminal record or known affiliations that would have placed him under law enforcement surveillance. According to U.S. media reports, the assailant fired about 10 rounds at close range, targeting the victims, and later sat near the entrance of the museum. Reports indicated that he had roamed the museum and opened fire before returning to wait by the door. The attacker was reported to have shouted pro-Palestinian slogans and said, 'I did this for Gaza.' The FBI confirmed that the suspect 'acted alone, with no information suggesting affiliation with any organization,' while Washington Police Chief Pamela Smith said there was "no intelligence indicating a terrorist act or hate crime in the city." President Trump expressed his condolences to the victims' families, posting on Truth Social: 'The shooting stems from antisemitism. The horrific murders in Washington must stop immediately—they are undoubtedly fueled by antisemitism. There is no place for hatred and extremism in the United States, and it is tragic that such events still occur.' Reactions poured in following the incident. Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, described the shooting as 'an antisemitic terrorist act,' writing on X: 'Targeting diplomats and the Jewish community crosses a red line. We trust that U.S. authorities will take strong action against those responsible for this criminal act.' Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the attack "was rooted in hatred and antisemitism that claimed the lives of Israeli embassy staff." U.S. Secretary of State Mark Rubio condemned the attack as 'a brazen act of cowardly, antisemitic violence,' pledging to hold those responsible accountable. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar noted that Israel's representatives 'are always at risk, especially during these times when the threat level is even higher.' Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid described the shooting as 'a horrific murder in Washington' and 'an antisemitic terrorist act.' — (Al Jazeera)
Toronto Sun
5 days ago
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
KINSELLA: Vast majority of antisemitism coming from far-left, report finds
Canada has had nearly as many antisemitic crimes as all of the rest of the world Yaron Lischinsky, right, and Sarah Milgrim were murdered outside the Jewish Museum in Washington. ISRAELI EMBASSY Does antisemitism come from the left or the right? This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account In truth, Jew-hatred is a shape-shifter. It isn't practiced by one ideology — it's embraced, at different moments in history, by every ideology, right and left. It is an ideology unto itself, in fact, one that is older than capitalism, communism, and all the other isms. It adapts, it changes with the times. It endures, like a pestilence for which we have no cure. But in the 600 days since Oct. 7, 2023 — when Hamas and Palestinian civilians slaughtered 1,200 Jews in Israel, raped 200 women and girls, and kidnapped 250 Jews and non-Jews — antisemitism has been overwhelmingly seeping out of just one side of the ideological spectrum: The left. Readers of this newspaper won't be particularly surprised by that. Since October 7, my colleagues and I have been writing about the unspooling of sanity in the West, and documenting the delusional psychosis that has seized the new generation of Jew-haters: Gen Z and Millennials who overwhelmingly classify themselves as 'progressives.' Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. There's nothing 'progressive' about hating someone because of their faith, race or sexual orientation, you might say, and you'd be right. But the youthful leftist Israel-haters have seemingly convinced themselves that they are opposing a colonialist, settler, white supremacist apartheid state — and, ipso facto, they aren't antisemites. They're fighting racism. It's no longer a theory, too: It's a fact. The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) is a loose coalition of about 700 mostly American organizations who, as the name implies, oppose antisemitism. It has been critical of antisemitic politicians on both sides of the ideological spectrum — from Democratic Rep. Ilan Omar to Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — and has been attacked by Iranian state media, always a good sign. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In their just-released report, Echoes of the Past and a Warning for the Present, CAM studied the unprecedented rise in antisemitism around the world in 2024. CAM summarized their findings in this way: 'We are now facing the most severe wave of antisemitism since the end of the Second World War, a phenomenon that demands urgent global attention. Jewish communities worldwide have been subjected to an unrelenting onslaught of violence, harassment, and systemic discrimination, fuelled by a fusion of far-left, far-right, and Islamist extremism.' But the vast majority of the hate, concluded CAM, is now coming from the left. Some of their key findings: 'Far-left incidents surged by 324.8 per cent compared to 2023, rendering the far-left the dominant ideological camp of antisemitic incidents. Radicalized social movements, media disinformation campaigns, and efforts to target Jewish communities under the guise of anti-Israel activism have primarily fuelled this increase.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'Far-right incidents dropped by 54.8% from 2023, suggesting that while the extreme right remains a threat, it has been eclipsed by the radicalization of leftist movements.' 'Islamist-motivated incidents increased by 44.3% from 2023, underscoring the dangerous convergence of far-left antisemitism and militant Islamist propaganda. This rise can be traced to coordinated propaganda networks, extremist religious teachings, and recruitment efforts targeting vulnerable individuals susceptible to radicalization.' Read More This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. What is fascinating, and ominous, is how far-left and Islamic extremists have partnered around the world — as they do, for example, every weekend at Dundas Square in Toronto. Marxists and pro-Hamas zealots have made common cause since October 7, and their unholy alliance, CAM reports, has 'evolved into a global force, leveraging anti-colonial narratives, certain critical theories, and anti-Zionist propaganda to fuel hostility toward the Jewish state and Jewish communities worldwide.' Grimly, they point to the most shocking evidence of this of all: The assassination of two young Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. last week — allegedly carried out by a Jew-hating fanatic long associated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. A group that trades in far-left, antisemitic conspiracy theories. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The worst places for the explosion in antisemitic hate? The United States and then Europe, unsurprisingly, given their relative populations. But the country that has had nearly as many antisemitic crimes as all of the rest of the world? Canada. Concludes the Combat Antisemitism Movement: 'The rise of antisemitism … is not a historical aberration — it is a defining moment in modern history. If the world fails to act now, we risk entering a new dark era in which antisemitism is not only tolerated but condoned, allowed to fester and become institutionalized. Such a process creates a downward spiral, as hate begets hate, and calls for the extermination of the Jewish state can quickly transform into actions designed to harm and to kill Jews. 'We must act decisively, forcefully and without hesitation. The Jewish people have endured persecution for centuries — but they will not stand alone. The time for action is now.' Ontario Music Money News Sunshine Girls Toronto & GTA
