Journalism
Occupy Wall Street Did More Than You Think
Published in The AtlanticA decade before United Nations climate scientists issued a “code red for humanity,” the 20-year-old college junior Evan Weber joined several thousand protesters descending on Wall Street to declare a code red for democracy. At the height of the Great Recession, Weber and his generation saw the climate crisis staring them in the face, along …
The iMac as Bauhaus’s Progeny
Published in Toronto StarToronto Star File Photos Products of the Bauhaus design movement are more findable than you might expect from such an avant-garde, long-ago phenomenon. One example is the Toronto Dominion Centre by architect Mies van der Rohe. BERLIN—It’s curious to see a building as a living, breathing thing. That was my first thought some weeks ago …
Culture Shift: China’s New Confucianism
Published in Los Angeles TimesLast fall, on the eve of Confucius‘ birthday (Sept. 28) and the International Confucius Culture Festival, I visited several of China’s 2,000 Confucian temples, including a palatial complex in Qufu, the sage’s hometown, one of the three great examples of classical Chinese architecture. What struck me in conversation with the locals was not how much …
Rescuing Mendelssohn from the Nazi Smear Campaign
Published in NewsweekWhen the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829, it caused a national sensation. In those days, when a composer died his contemporaries stopped playing him and his music died as well. But Mendelssohn, a brilliant composer, pianist and conductor who felt indebted to Bach, broke with tradition and performed …
Why Even Republicans are Backing a Green New Deal for America
Published in Ethical Corporation/ReutersWhen New York’s firebrand 29-year-old Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled the Democrats’ Green New Deal resolution on 7 February, America took notice. The sheer scope and ambition of the proposal jolted a Washington political establishment that, unlike cities and businesses across the country, has made little effort – not to mention progress – addressing the climate crisis.
With Sephardic Routes, Spain Connects with Jewish History
Published in Los Angeles TimesGIRONA, Spain—For Aida Oceransky, life as a Jew in Spain today isn’t the silent burden it used to be. When she emigrated here from her native Mexico in 1968, Oceransky didn’t dare talk about her family’s Ukrainian Jewish past. All the Jews she knew in the 1970s and ’80s went to Mass. Even a decade …
Interview With Widow of Tunisia’s Slain Popular Leader
Published in Occupy.comBasma Khalfaoui, the widow of Tunisia’s recently assassinated political and social leader Chokri Belaid, was one hour late for our meeting at her home last Saturday. She is often late these days, occupied with an unending stream of interviews and inaugurations of the Tunis streets and squares that are now being renamed for her husband—the …
Germany’s Greek Tragedy: Review
Published in Financial TimesIn the waning days of the first world war, with two million German soldiers dead and more than twice that many injured, a sailors’ mutiny in the northern port city of Kiel kicked off a revolution that would destroy imperial Germany and set the republic on a visionary, democratic course. As a result, striking miners …
“We Have to Be Awake”: Interview with Vaclav Havel
Published in NewsweekTwenty years after he led the Velvet Revolution, paving the way for the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe, Václav Havel, a playwright and dissident who became free Czechoslovakia’s first president, sat down in Berlin with NEWSWEEK’s Michael Levitin to discuss fear of Russia, the importance of NATO, and why some of his countrymen still …
Fired in Stone: A Serbian Monk Burns Through Kosovo
Published in The WalrusGracanica – The German peacekeeper is no older than twenty. Blond, skinny, cradling a machine gun half his size, he approaches our Jeep at the razor-wired bridge gate and tells the monk – my driver – to step out. Father Pimen curses under his breath. The only people Pimen hates more than the Americans who …
Shadow Places: A Journalist’s Rediscovery Breaks the Long Silence in Bavaria
Published in TikkunThe town of Plattling lies at the foothills of the Bavarian Forest, which climbs mountainously off the plain where the Isar and Danube rivers meet in southeastern Germany. The sky hangs oppressively gray here, even in June when the potato and sugar beet fields emit a green summer luster and the Niederbayern, or Lower Bavaria, …