Menachem Wecker

One wouldn't necessarily expect to find The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) Maastricht to be bursting at the seams with faith. If the art auction and fair worships at any altar, it would be Mammon's rather than Apollo's. The notion that a camel has a better chance of...

Particularly in this era of YouTube and Flickr, it's worth pondering what makes an image or a video clip iconic -- or "go viral," to use the social media lingo?

If the question had an easy answer, of course, Hollywood film...

A character named Me -- who incidentally has been bitten by a rabid bat and is on his way, Wizard of Oz-like, to find an elixir -- is walking in the mountains when he runs into bin Laden.

Speaking in what the stage directions call for as "a deep, gentle...

Applicants should try to visit campuses and prepare, as students, to advocate for their needs.

There are about 1.1 million physically disabled undergraduates in the United States, according to Steve Kaye, research director of the Disability Statistics Center at University of California, San Francisco, citing data...

Ramadan looms on the immediate horizon. The Jewish High Holidays are scheduled to begin shortly thereafter. It is certainly a pensive time for many of the variously faithful across the globe.

Some bemoan "once-a-year Jews," whose synagogue connections are limited to paying dues and filling pews on Rosh Hashana...

I guess I was wrong about Iran.

Back in January 2007, I blogged about the World Award of Monotheistic Religions, which was hosted by Tehran. The third place winner? Michal Jandura of Poland, whose piece showed three interlocking books -- one marked...

It's wholly appropriate that Balaam's legacy -- at least to the few Bible enthusiasts who even know who he is -- is likely to evoke the expression "Balaam's ass."

In fact, the Old Testament narrative about Balaam (Hebrew...

Here's a sad statement about Islamic art as a discipline: a Google news search for "Oleg Grabar" at publication time yields a mere four hits.

This is particularly disappointing since Grabar (pictured), 81, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, died...

Five days after he was called "not a simple villain" by a Dec. 21 op-ed in the Washington Post for a recently released 1973 recording of him telling then-President Richard Nixon that Soviets gassing Jews was a humanitarian, not an American, problem, Henry Kissinger penned his...

"I remember being a wee child and having an Advent calendar in my bedroom," says Tyler Green, editor of ARTINFO's Modern Art Notes, Modern Painters columnist and author of a Tumbl'd Advent calendar for art lovers.

...

When Richard McBee talks about Abraham and Sarah's marriage, he calls it "a deeply problematic human relationship," which leads him to ask, "Do we look at biblical figures as paradigms of behavior?"

McBee is not a therapist who thinks he is living in biblical times, nor is he...

Erin Banks (pictured) works in the public relations office at the Church of Scientology. She responded to questions about the intersection of Scientology and the arts.

Menachem Wecker: L. Ron Hubbard is quoted as saying that "art is not just the fodder of a...

When Jean Claude Wouters used to see people hawking Van Gogh postcards, kitchen aprons and other kitsch in tourist traps outside the Louvres, he was almost as thrilled as Jesus was running into the moneylenders outside the temple.

"I used to be upset by...

Citing Luke 9:46-48, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, recounts the story where Jesus, confronting the disciples and their debate about which one is the greatest, pulls a child beside himself.

"Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me," he says,...

With the High Holidays right around the corner, Calendars.com recently published a 2011 calendar, A Sweet Year, with paintings by Mark Podwal. I interviewed Marc Winkelman, president of Calendar Holdings LLC elsewhere; here, Podwal answers questions about his work.

Mark Paredes is author of the blog Jews and Mormons for the The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, a 150,000-circulation weekly newspaper.

A Mormon, Paredes was previously the executive director of the western region of the Zionist Organization of America, the national director of...

"I'm constantly constructively uncomfortable with both parts of the term 'Jewish art,'" says Dan Friedman, arts and culture editor of the New York-based Forward.

Launched as a Yiddish daily in 1897, the Forward began as an important voice for Jewish immigrants, trade unions and "moderate, democratic...

"Obscure Swedish scholar" Gunnar Samuelsson says that according to the Gospels, Jesus was not crucified. All that can be said with authority is that he shouldered "some kind of torture or execution device" on his way to being "suspended" on a hill, according to an article...

Ben Shahn's Allegory (1948), which is part of the collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, shows a lion with a fiery mane standing in an abstract red, blue, green and purple landscape. A bright red-orange structure in the bottom left corner might be...

The current exhibit at Ben Uri Gallery: The London Jewish Museum of Art, titled Cross Purposes: Shock and Contemplation in Images of the Crucifixion, is raising some eyebrows, according to a recent story in the Jewish Chronicle (London).

According to JC writer Marcus Dysch...