Joel Schalit

Alone in the Crowd

Zeek adds a new landing page image every  Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Since we relaunched the magazine in conjunction with the Forward last Fall, our art director has been using photos I’ve taken both here, in Europe, as well as in Israel and the US. Maya added this photo on Wednesday.

Shot in Venice last October, it’s one of a dozen or so pictures I took in Italy over the last year, of black figurines, used in window displays like this. The arrangement of little white kids, around the bust of the noticeably larger, young black woman, is particularly interesting. Their eyes are so vacant.

Out of the Ghetto

The February edition of Pagine Ebraiche is now out. Pictured above is an author interview, centered around the publication of Israel vs. Utopia. The title is “From the Venice Ghetto to Rishon Le Zion”, in reference to my family’s greater path of migration to Ottoman Palestine. It’s the first of two pieces of Italian press on the book, the second of which is forthcoming next month.

There are a couple of errors in the profile, but they’ve since been corrected. It’s an otherwise terrific piece, which, most importantly, gave a certain member of my family, extremely self-conscious of our Italian heritage, an enormous amount of pleasure to read. Granted, his Italian is about as rotten as mine, but still good enough to get the gist of an 850 + word newspaper article.

Israel vs. Utopia

At this year’s Venice Biennale, the Israeli and American pavilions were situated right next to each other. In this photograph, Israel sits to the left, America to the right. “Israel” is written in Hebrew on the front of the Israeli pavilion.  The word “avarice” graces the left side of the US building, bordering Israel.