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with Tom Reiss  Who was Lev Nussimbaum? What was he really like?
At his height he was a kind of jazz age/Weimar media star, a
professional "Orientalist" who liked to play up his exotic
childhood, and was part of the café society that included people
like Walter Benjamin and also the brilliant Russian exiles, like
the Nabokovs and the Pasternaks. It was during the whole
"Cabaret" period in Berlin, but it was much much wilder and
stranger than it was even presented in that film. But what was
amazing to me was that while most Jews in the 20's and 30's
tried as hard as they could to assimilate, Lev did everything he
could to make himself stand out. In the cafes of Berlin and
Vienna he was sporting flowing