Kehinde Wiley | The World Stage: Israel | The Jewish Museum NYC

   i saw the kehinde wiley exhibit at the jewish museum this past thursday. i did not think that i would like it as much as i had.
kehinde wiley is a black man who has made paintings of men of color who have been influenced by american black hip hop culture around the world. one of the countries that he has gone to was israel . he was particularly  fascinated by ethiopian jews in israel.
 this is an exhibit about  israelis and was made in conjunction with the jewish musem of new york city.   the paintings are large and they meld together ashkenazic , sephardic and ethopian jewish cultures.
the exhibit displays paintings as well as torah ark curtains and religious oriented papercuts . wiley incorporated patterns from these very ashkenazic jewish items into the portraits of ethiopian jewish israelis. above each painting is a mini torah ark with lions . for the jewish men portrayed the ten commandments are written and for the israeli arab portraits there is the rodney king mantra  "why can't we all just get along" written in hebrew. the melding of all the different cultures in each painting is quite beautiful. this video that i have posted is also at the exhibit . when i viewed the exhibit there was a free tour . it was quite detailed and without it i would not have understood as much of the hidden meaning of each painting as there is not much text in this exhibit. unfortunately the tour is only given  on weekdays . perhaps the artist wanted the paintings to speak for themselves.
even if you do not see a guided tour of this exhibit it is still worthwhile to view it.

the goldbergs

the goldbergs is a 1950's sitcom about a jewish family who live in the bronx. i  did not hear of this show until the 1990's . since i have discovered the goldbergs   i have viewed many episodes at the jewish museum and the museum of television and radio both in nyc. netflix has the last season of the show when they move to the suburbs.
short of buying the the ultimate goldbergs  full sereis collection one can now view many episodes of the goldbergs on amazon.com . you can buy an episode at a time or buy amazon prime membership to view it online. i must tell you that viewing these shows is the ultimate. they can be a bit corny at times but hearing gertrude berg (mrs. goldberg) talk about her cousin chana leah or her tante elke is so much fun. to think that the shenanigans of a jewish family who act so ethnic could have been on network television is amazing.
i just viewed my new favorite goldbergs  episode. it is episode 7 of season 1 which is about cousin chana leah who is very frustrated by her single daughter and thinks that all of the problems in her life would be solved if her single daughter married. because this series was filmed in the 1950's it is  far from pc  which i found extremely hilarious due to the current shidduch crisis. this episode is so funny and reminds me very much of present day frum jews.