Monthly Archives: May 2020

Zak’s Quarantine Dream House (Gal Cohen)

Posted on May 28, 2020 by zjb

I asked for a modern house with orange trees under a starry night sky; on Mars. Thank you, Quarantine Dream House Machine. [Gal Cohen, Zaks House of Dreams by Quarantine Dream House Machine] [2020]  

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Quarantine Dream House Machine (Gal Cohen)

Posted on May 27, 2020 by zjb

  Artist’s Statement: Quarantine Dream House Machine QDHM is a project initiated while in quarantine. A digital series of mixed media works of imagined houses based on people’s descriptions of their dream houses. QDHM is based on alternative imagined present, … Continue reading →

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(Notre Dame) It’s Moral To Risk Human Life (Coronavirus & Religion)

Posted on May 26, 2020 by zjb

We are in our society regularly willing to take on ourselves or impose on others risks — even lethal risks — for the good of society. We send off young men and women to war to defend the security of … Continue reading →

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(PDF) Albert Memmi (1920-2020)

Posted on May 25, 2020 by zjb

Found at Communists In Situ these pdfs to books and essays by the great Albert Memmi z”l about colonialism and decolonialism, Jewishness and race. WORKS BY ALBERT MEMMI The Pillar of Salt (1953) Portrait of a Jew (1962) The Colonizer and the … Continue reading →

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(Tarkovsky) Hope & Boredom & The Spiritual in Art (Stalker)

Posted on May 25, 2020 by zjb

This here is a more thorough reading of Tarkvosky’s The Stalker (1979), just before he left the Soviet Union for the West. . My own comments are more more religion-specific. By way of a quick plot synopsis: Once upon a … Continue reading →

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(Coronavirus) 100,000 (Human Toll)

Posted on May 24, 2020 by zjb

In case you’ve only seen this on a digital platform, this is what a physical copy of the front page + pages 12, 13, and 14 looks like on a digital platform.

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(Chevra Kadisha) Care for the Dead (Coronavirus

Posted on May 22, 2020 by zjb

[About material religion and moral care and comfort, disruption and the loneliness of dying, about private decisions and discussions about public work, I’m posting this from a friend writing about her work at a Chevra Kadisha during the Coronavirus pandemic. … Continue reading →

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Care for a Corpse (Dignity) Coronavirus

Posted on May 17, 2020 by zjb

“There has to be some dignity in this, otherwise I might as well be a garbage man,” is what the funeral director told the journalist. The photographs by Philip Montgomery that accompany this article here in the NYT about two … Continue reading →

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Varieties of Haredi Theological Response to Coronavirus

Posted on May 13, 2020 by zjb

Waiting to see primary sources, but here’s a quick review of Haredi response in Israel to the Coronovirus with multiple links. Some of it is standard reward/punish. The pandemic is caused by lax Torah study, the sexual immodesty of women, … Continue reading →

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Tablet Magazine Judaism = Haredi All The Time

Posted on May 12, 2020 by zjb

I say this with some embarrassment because of colleague-friends in Jewish Studies who are now a part of it. Expecting their tolerant forbearance, I’ll say it nonetheless. Tablet is incorrigible. Whether Haredi, ex-Haredi, neo-Haredi, it is Haredi-Haredi-Haredi all the time … Continue reading →

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