Born in Berlin, Michael L. Munk studied at the Slobodka Yeshiva and received a doctorate from the University of Wurzburg. Munk fled to England in 1938 and settled in Boston in 1941. He later worked at Beth Jacob school in Boro Park, Brooklyn, and subsequently was involved with promoting the humaneness of kosher slaughtering. Munk was fascinated with the symbolism of the Hebrew alphabet. He moved to Israel after his retirement.
There’s a marvelous story by Eduardo Stilman about a silver samovar. It caressingly describes the prodigious object—its polished ebony handles, finely carved arabesques, mischievously-turned spigot…
It was one of the stories from Genesis that most frightened me as a child: the story of Lot’s wife.
She was told not to look, and she looked; and her punishment came swift and horrible. Frozen in…