LABA 
Current LABA fellow Jared Hoffman discusses which club he’d want to be a member of. This summer, I heard a phrase come out of my mouth that gave me pause. I was eating lasagna at a restaurant called Elegante (it was not particularly elegant) on the Rockaways with my friend Jen and her daughter. Somehow
Dear Friends, Welcome to a new year of LABA. A new year of ancient questions. A new year of investigating the laughter and the angst of HUMOR. From birth to death, pain complicates life–and humor, like a good analgesic, makes it palatable. I look forward to introducing our 2019-2020 LABA fellows: Charlie Buckholtz, Charles Gershman, Jared Hoffman, Mark Katz, Anna
Two Midwestern Jews walk into LABA. One for an interview in June 2019. The other for a LABA study session she’s been invited to check out. Both leave their LABA interactions changed and thoroughly hooked on LABA. Laura Newmark, the new Director of LABA, will remember that first night as a highlight of her early time
LABA Buenos Aires, or LABA BA, was the first LABA satellite program to emerge outside of the NY mothership. Sharing Jewish text and incubating new Jewish culture through art is the LABA mission that we are proud now extends globally. We are excited to announce that this winter, LABA BA will be co-presenting with the Theater at the 14th Street Y, A
Three times a year—on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the Feast of Weeks, and on the Feast of Booths—all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place that He will choose. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed, but each with his own gift, according to the blessing that
LABA fellow Dmitri Barcomi describes his work-in-progress, Necrophoresis, a collaboration with writer-choreographer Seth Majnoon, as “a cross-medium dance-theater piece exploring the death rituals of ants and the life of Anna Freud.” LABA Contributing Editor Amy Handelsman discussed the work with Barcomi. You can see the theater piece at LABAlive III: LIFE + DEATH at the
LABA alum and journal Contributing Editor Amy Handelsman on her recent trip to Haifa’s Bnai Zion Medical Center. Tuesday, April 2, 2019, Haifa. “Only the mothers knew what to do,” said Dr. Amnon Rofe, CEO of Bnai Zion Medical Center (BZMC) in Israel’s northern city of Haifa. “They grabbed their children and babies and ran.” We
LABA fellow Richard F Saudek (clown) talks to Brian Dailey (juggler) about their theater piece, DEAD and ALIVE. In the piece, after finding a dead body, a man feels obligated to perform the Jewish rites of shemira, or “guarding” the body. But the body has other ideas. Dailey and Saudek will perform it at LABAlive
LABA fellow Ilana Sichel contemplates life and death and writing. In the past half hour, I have gotten up from my desk to get cookies, decided they weren’t the right type of cookie, then got up a minute later to get another kind. I have felt a slight chill and decided that I can’t sit
Current LABA fellow Yochai Greenfeld on the witty comments of the Talmudic sages, and why Jews around the world must learn to laugh at themselves more. In our last sessions at LABA, we studied a fascinating passage from the Babylonian Talmud: What is the interpretation of the word Babylonia? Rabbi Yoḥanan says it means mixed,