An Architect Prescribes the Ten Things a Scholar Needs in a City by Ghiora Aharoni As articulated in the Babylonian Talmud, the criteria for a city where a scholar should reside paint a picture via various requisites of life (Synagogue, slaughterer, surgeon, schoolmaster), and also present a historical portrait of the basic needs of
A look into the bleuprint of life on the road by Stephen Hazan Arnoff During the years that I banged out a modest living as a musician playing bars, frat houses, weddings, coffee houses, college lawns, the street, and summer festivals on the part of the bill when sometimes the cotton candy machines were not
Reflections from Scholars and Others By Karen Loew The question of what features make a city fit for a scholar prods us all to think about what we need or want in our city, our neighborhood, even our community center. What makes a place fit for me? Related to
Or how I, once again, discovered that I am indeed quite Jewish by Elissa Strauss In my early 20s I left Australia, where I had been living for a few months, and went alone to Southeast Asia looking for adventure and enlightenment. I wasn’t ignorant of the
A New Talmud-inspired poem by Eugene Ostashevsky 1. Once upon a time there was a scholar who resided in a town without a court of justice that imposes flagellation and decrees penalties. So what happened? His phone rang. “Hello, caller,” said the scholar. “I represent a charity fund collected by two and distributed by
On the need for beauty in urban spaces By Basmat Hazan and Ruby Namdar Basmat: I like lists a lot. Not necessarily grocery lists, but rather lists from classical rabbinical texts. I feel that a series of pithy statements, often seemingly mundane, is able to challenge our sense
An Animated Guide to the Haunted House Since Leviticus By Sam Holleran They’re usually the site of a bad event: or they’re home to a bad person: In Gothic literature, old memories can’t be sealed off. Locked rooms have
What the Bible has on Springsteen when it comes to toxic domestic spaces by Stephen Hazan Arnoff What’s missing from much of Bruce Springsteen’s recorded work today, and what makes his older work so compelling, can be found in spades in Leviticus 14. Both the Bible and the Boss take on an impossibly big
What cleaning our homes is really all about By Elissa Strauss I like housework and I find it satisfying. I get a frisson of joy from fluffing my pillows, or watching the bottom of the bathtub gleam like a pearl. Making the bed is a more powerful stimulant than my morning
An actor explores how to announce a plague, or its purge By Zvi Sahar And he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house. Leviticus 14:35 Our most secure and safe place is our home. Between its four