Jewish Book Fair schedules variety of programs in North San Diego County

LA JOLLA, California (Press Release)– The 16th Annual San Diego Jewish Book Fair, thanks to a generous grant from the Leichtag Family Foundation, will present four events in North County at two locations. 
 
On Sun., Nov. 14 at Temple Solel in Cardiff:  Sheila Isenberg will present her biography of heiress and resistance hero Muriel Gardiner at 2 p.m. and J.J. Surbeck invites teens to a conversation about issues in the Middle East at 7 p.m. 
 
On Mon., Nov. 15 at the Dove Library in Carlsbad:  Yale Strom offers an in-depth look at brilliant clarinetist Dave Tarras at 1 p.m. and McArthur Fellowship winner Rebecca Newberger Goldstein discusses her fearless, funny, brilliant new book at 7:30 p.m.   A book signing will follow the presentations of Isenberg, Strom and Goldstein.
 
Sheila Isenberg – Sun., Nov. 14 at 2 p.m.
Isenberg’s new biography Muriel’s War: An American Heiress in the Nazi Resistance tells the story of Muriel Gardner, a courageous woman who left a life of privilege for a world of danger and international espionage.  She was a product of Chicago’s high society and daughter of a dynasty of millionaire meat packers.  Most importantly, she was the benefactress of countless WWII refugees, a daring woman who smuggled passports and money and offered her home as a safe house for anti-Fascist dissidents.  An American heiress turned resistance hero, Muriel went on to become an eminent psychoanalyst, and was a founder of the International Rescue Committee. 
 
Isenberg is also the author of A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry, named a notable book by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and featured on the web site of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the groundbreaking Women Who Love Men Who Kill.  She is co-author with the late William M. Kunstler of My Life as a Radical Lawyer and collaborator with Tracey Brown on The Life and Times of Ron Brown. 

Isenberg’s books have been translated into other languages and she has appeared in documentaries and on multiple media platforms, including NPR, CNN, “20/20,” “The Today Show,” and “Good Morning, America.”  Born in New York City, Isenberg earned a B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and studies in the graduate English Department of Hunter College.  A former award-winning reporter, she is now adjunct professor of English at Marist College and lives with her husband in New York’s Hudson Valley.
 
J.J. Surbeck – Sun., Nov. 14 at 7 p.m.
J.J. Surbeck, Co-Founder of T.E.A.M. (Training and Education About the Middle East), invites the teen community of North County to join him in a conversation about Israel and advocacy issues: Ten issues that every college bound student must know about Israel. 

Using Michael Bard’s book On One Foot, as a resource, the students will engage in a dialogue regarding how to respond to critics of Israel in a fair and objective fashion.  The conversation with Surbeck is offered free of charge to all students.
 
Surbeck is a Swiss-educated attorney who worked for 16 years for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Swiss private organization which many have dubbed the “Guardian of the Geneva Conventions.”  Surbeck was the ICRC’s public relations point person for North America from 1984 to 1989, and subsequently served for several years with the American Red Cross.  Surbeck is the Executive Director of the non-profit organization T.E.A.M., an organization with a focus on presenting a more balanced image of the Middle East conflict than the one projected by the media and many academics.
 
Yale Strom – Mon., Nov. 15 at 1 p.m.
Author, musician, and klezmer expert Yale Strom gives us an in-depth look at the man many hail as the “Benny Goodman of klezmer” in Dave Tarras: The King of Klezmer.  A brilliant clarinetist, the Russian-born Tarras’ talent almost went unheard by most as he was conscripted into the czar’s army in 1915.  But, as was the case so often in his life, music made the difference, and kept him out of the trenches.  He eventually landed in New York City where he began cementing his legend.  Strom will present a rare “informance” (informal performance) featuring both words and music to tell the private story of Dave Tarras.
 
Strom, the world’s leading klezmer artist, has been called “an all-around musical visionary” (Seth Rogovoy).  Time Magazine wrote “Through his art, Strom has brought back his spiritual klezmer ancestors.”  Strom is known for composing “New Jewish” music, which combines klezmer with Hasidic nigunim, Rom, jazz, classical, Balkan and Sephardic motifs.  These compositions range from quartets to a symphony, which premiered with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.  He composed original music for the Denver Center production of Tony Kushner’s The Dybbuk, and composed all the New Jewish music for the National Public Radio series “Fiddlers, Philosophers & Fools: Jewish Short Stories From the Old World to the New,” hosted by Leonard Nimoy, as well as numerous film scores. 

In addition to his work as a musician and composer, Strom is the author of ten books, and an accomplished film director, playwright and photographer.  He has directed five award-winning documentary films, one of which was short-listed for an Academy Award, and has composed music for countless others.  He has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe, and taught at NYU for four years.  He is currently Artist in Residence in the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University.
 
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein – Mon., Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Goldstein has received the MacArthur Fellowship (a.k.a., the Genius Grant), the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Radcliffe Fellowship, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  In 2008, she was designated a Humanist Laureate by the International Academy, and has also been a National Jewish Book Award winner.  She will discuss her latest book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.  In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly calls 36 Arguments…”rollicking…irreverent and witty” as it details the story of Cass Seltzer, an atheist who is in for a lot of soul-searching.
 
Goldstein grew up in White Plains, New York, and graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize of Excellence in Philosophy, and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy.  While in graduate school she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship and a Whiting Foundation Fellowship.  She then returned to her alma mater, where she taught courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, the rationalists, the empiricists, and the ancient Greeks.  It was during her tenure at Barnard that she used a summer vacation to write her critically acclaimed first novel, The Mind-Body Problem

More novels followed, most of which have won major literary prizes.  According to the MacArthur Foundation, Goldstein’s novels “dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling.  Her books tell a compelling story as they describe with wit, compassion and originality the interaction of mind and heart.”   Goldstein has also taught in the Columbia MFA writing program and in the department of philosophy at Rutgers, has been a visiting scholar at Brandeis University, and was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Trinity College.  Currently she is a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University and lives in Boston.
 
Admission to the North County presentations is $6 for members and $8 for non-members. The conversation with J.J. Surbeck for teens is free.  Temple Solel is located at 3575 Manchester Ave., Cardiff; and the Dove Library is at 1775 Dove Lane, Carlsbad.  For more information or to purchase tickets, call the JCC Box Office at 858-362-1348 or visit the web site at sdjbf.org.

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Preceding provided by the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture