Lion Feuchtwanger was a prolific and internationally famous German-Jewish writer. His exhaustively researched historical novels (or plays) often dealt with themes from Jewish history. In Munich, he had an orthodox Jewish education, mastering Hebrew at an early age. Later studies…
Josephus on Stage in New York (1933)
In November 1933, the Yiddish Art Theater of New York staged Josephus, a dramatic adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s Josephus (Der jüdische Krieg). This two-act, 22-scene play was scripted and directed by Maurice Schwartz, who also acted the lead role of…
Zvi Hirsch Masliansky (1856-1943)
Zvi Hirsch Masliansky, born in Slutsk, Belarus, was a preacher of renown educated in the Mir Yeshiva. He became an educator influenced by the Haskalah, a Hebraist, and a Zionist campaigner. Obliged to leave Russia in 1895, he rebuilt his…
Josephus Drawn by Bukhsbaum (2004)
This 2004 drawing by Genrikh Bukhsbaum (1922-2008) depicts Josephus visiting Jewish priests imprisoned by the Roman emperor Nero (Josephus, Life 13-16). Bukhsbaum was born in 1922 in Lvov, Poland (now Ukraine). When the Germans invaded Eastern Poland in 1941, he…