Sublime

“Joe the Jew.”

Brenner, complex though he was, was perhaps the cultural icon of the Second Aliyah. His work, still considered brilliant, surfaced issues with which Israel continues to wrestle. He would have undoubtedly done even more than he managed in his brief life, but he was murdered by an Arab mob in the 1921 Jaffa riots.

The Jewish community in the United States, the largest in the world, is disappearing faster than any other since the Lost Ten Tribes vanished from the pages of history more than two and a half thousand years ago.

For twenty years, Walter had been archiving magicians’ television appearances. Any time a magician performed on a talk show, a variety special, even guest spots on sitcoms and dramas, Walter fired up his VCR and pressed Record. Walter used those tapes as bargaining chips with other collectors across the country, trading his copies for footage he di