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