The Heavens Opened: Notes on Seeing Angels

By Ben Nadler. I live in the United States, a place where people regularly encounter angels. If you spend any amount of time traveling through this country, you will meet plenty of folks who have seen one. These divine beings seem to appear just out of reach, beside hospital beds and car wrecks, outside windows,

For a (Forbidden) Fruitful Year

My name is Chanan Ben Simon, I am a vocalist, composer and a multimedia artist. Last year, I was a LABA ‘Broken’ fellow, and this year, I am thrilled to lead the new fabulous TABOO cohort, as the new Director of LABA NY. Last year, LABA mended the Broken pieces of me with golden glue.

TO BE or NOT TO BE

Things were pretty quiet 14 billion years ago. This “quietus” was so peaceful for a literal eternity, that there was no way of even knowing that time was passing. And what is time but the possibility of it elapsing? So maybe there wasn’t even time. Which sounds quite restful. But also pretty tedious. At some

Broken Vessels: Presence of the Divine

I remember vividly, from a very early age, I felt broken and different from the community that surrounded me. I was emotionally separate from my own family that I was born into, I didn’t belong and didn’t feel aligned with the guided/conditioned behavior around me. I discovered at 3 years old, the only space I

Ex Libris in Yangon by Melissa Hacker

I am in Yangon, Myanmar, in an apartment carved out of an early 19th century teak house, shutters open on the veranda, catching a slight, slow, afternoon breeze, ipad in hand, looking at images of 1920’s woodcuts. For the past few years I have been dreaming up Ex Libris: A Life in Bookplates, a film about my Austrian Jewish