Much of what Fluxus did was ephemeral. What remains, along with books, are the artifacts.

Yes, we Jews are time travelers, we anchor our tradition in time. In our time, we go back to the past and look onto the future, reminding us of the unity of time and of our eternity.

Boris Lurie’s vision is a world of universal exploitation and the existential horror of it is grounded in his Holocaust experiences.

Our capitalist zeitgeist encourages us to shelter, to not seek help, to not show vulnerability, for the sake of our unconscious wish of dominance over others. 

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The struggle to portray reality in art has a different affect in the work of the Boris Lurie, a survivor of the Holocaust, beginning in Riga, Latvia. Lurie’s struggle to deal with his experiences and his losses in the Holocaust was reflected in his understanding of the values of Art and the role of the artist in society.

Our tradition teaches us that our ability to stop and question rules is nothing short than a must-do.

“Jewish futurism is the idea that our people is far closer to its beginning than its end, that our future relies on development of ideas that are by their nature radical, that long-term thinking is an exercise neither in escapism nor frivolity but the thing that we have been called to do since the days of our foremother Sarah, who set the tempo for us all by literally giving birth to Isaac at the age of ninety, exemplifying the idea that this is a religion in which the old can and does give birth to the young.”

Our tradition encourages us on numerous occasions to use our imagination in order to succeed in our Jewish practice.

Sometimes freedom can be found inside a boundary that is put around us by choice. For me, it is the boundary of my Jewish identity, my nationality. 

Freedom demands that we understand how the world around us works.

In Eastern Europe, the size and cohesion of your ethnic group is very obviously the backdrop to your personal power. In America, we try to detach ourselves from the paradigm, but it still haunts us, some more than others. (Why is it that being a minority is a signal that society needs to protect a group? Even in places where the “minority” is a majority?)

Cultural identification is much more ambiguous than first meets the eye. Cultural groupings that seem obvious now fall apart under closer examination.

“Chief among the forces affecting political folly, is lust for power, named by Tacitus as ‘the most flagrant of all the passions.’ Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise.”

Jack Micheline, the poet, said, “To be Jewish is to be free and beautiful.” I love this statement, but I find it challenging. Is it actually true? Is it a truth that accords with the kind of Rabbinic Judaism that I have been a part of? Is it true from the point of view of a Secular Jew like Micheline only?

We need to take a risk, which sometimes means to literally leap into the absurd, simply because… we have no choice.

My new goal is to create a separate Der Nister-distributed monthly newsletter, available to those who specifically sign up for it, which I call “Der Zunenshtral” (The Sunbeam), in homage to the many Yiddishists who came before to LA and fell in love with the sun.

Ahad Ha’am’s greatness is not in either his originality or in his successes. It lies in his struggle to overcome his flaws and to share what was best in himself despite those flaws.

We were made to create, we were made to become participants in the act of creation. The modern process of alienation in labor took it away from us.

״מצװה גדולה להיות בשׂמחה.״ אַזוי האָט רבי נחמן געזאָגט, ״כִּי טֶבַע הָאָדָם-לִמְשׁךְ עַצְמוֹ לְמָרָה שְׁחרָה וְעַצְבוּת מֵחֲמַת פִּגְעֵי וּמִקְרֵי הַזְּמַן, וְכָל אָדָם מָלֵא יִסּוּרִים.״ (װײַל דעם מענטשס נאַטור איז זיך אַרײַנצוצויגן אין אַ מרה־שהורה און טרויער צוליב די אומגערעכטיקײט פֿון זײַן תּקופֿה; יעדער אײנער לײַדט פֿון יסורים.) צו װאַרטן אויף עולם־הבא איז נישט קײן לײזונג.