PURPLE HAZE
by Charlie Finch



Judaism began as a religion fully subservient to one God, which did not acknowledge the hope of an afterlife. Working out the contradictions of a hopeless hope in the Creator has been the conundrum of the rabbis of the Talmud, the Kabbalah, the mystics of 19th-century Eastern Europe and is now the subject of a dual show "Irving Petlin: A Retrospective," which has just opened at Jan Krugier and also opens at Richard L. Feigen and Co. on Feb. 9, 2010.

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