Whether it’s our recent weather, from snow and ice storms to spring-like, almost balmy days, to the current state of our national politics, life these days is a study in contrasts.
This week’s JT plays out that theme, starting with a powerful cover story by reporter Connor Graham about the moving artwork of artist Esther Krinitz, at the American Visionary Art Muesum until 2024, whose hand-stitched collages document life in her Polish village when she was a child. Bright and colorful scenes, upon closer observation, reveal the dark side of living under Nazi occupation.
Krinitz’s daughter noted the contrast in how people approach her mother’s work.
“I have long observed that one of the things that makes my mother’s artwork so powerful is that because they are beautiful and so colorful, you approach them openly,” Bernice Steinhardt explained. “Unlike pictures of concentration camps — you kind of protect yourself when you’re getting ready to look — [hers] are so inviting that you’re already in them before you realize what you’re seeing.”
Even our cover image, which appears to be a blue-sky-day parade of happy villagers, is Krinitz’s witnessing of a death march, called “Road to Krasnik.”
Likewise, in our coverage of the William and Irene Weinberg Family Baltimore Jewish Film Festival, kicking off at the Gordon Center March 23, this year’s slate of films offers moviegoers light-hearted comedy to the darkest of film noir.
In this week’s You Should Know, profiling digital strategist Lindsey Moskowitz, reporter Victoria Brown reveals Moskowitz’s contrasting interests — from the world of hi-tech web design to animal rescue.
This issue also runs down an upcoming series of forums organized by Great Talks, Inc., where many experts with contrasting beliefs and ideas discuss some of the hot topics of the day, with cool heads in a give-and-take conversation with the audience, a contrast to the traditional lecture.
Just in time for spring training, Victoria’s story, “Heading Home,” offers Israeli baseball.
“Baseball might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Israel,” Brown writes, “yet that’s exactly what the subjects of a new documentary do, and they do it well.”
Last, but not least, Victoria’s entertaining coverage of upcoming Purim festivities highlights that the costumed, face-painted holiday isn’t all fun and games, as observers delve into the moral of the Megillah.
While the light and dark sides of life, the good and the bad, the traditional versus the unexpected, may at times just feel like so many challenges, it is these contrasts and the challenges they pose that often make life so complex and interesting.
I hope you find this week’s issue both thought-provoking and entertaining.
Enjoy.
