By Paul Greenberg LA JOLLA, California — Now in its 11th year, The Joyce Forum, founded by its namesake Joyce Axelrod, will present a variety of short films from around the world, as well as two feature films from Israel during the San Diego Jewish Film Festival “San Diego has been a gold mine [...]
By Paul Greenberg and Yvonne Greenberg SAN DIEGO — “When I now pick out bananas to eat, I always pick out the ones that are covered with freckles because those are the ripe ones. (Before doing this book) those are the ones I used to avoid,” explained Rich Cohen, author of The Fish That Ate the [...]
By Paul Greenberg LA JOLLA, California — Impressionist/impersonator extraordinaire Rich Little, with a repertoire of more than 200 wide-ranging voices and counting, isn’t Jewish but he sure has a Jewish sense of humor. Asked in a recent phone interview from Las Vegas, where he currently resides and where he has lived intermittently for [...]
By Paul Greenberg SAN DIEGO –From the schmaltzy Ladies and Gentlemen…, Biddie Schitzerman, to Don’t Tell Santa You’re Jewish’s ironic ending, to David and Goliath‘s chilling story of a dog (a German Shepherd, no less) saving a Jew fleeing for his life from German soldiers in a Czechoslovakian forest during the Holocaust, to the animated (very) [...]
By Yvonne and Paul Greenberg SAN DIEGO — Speaking about this year’s Joyce Forum in a recent phone interview, its founder, Joyce Axelrod, proudly pointed out that this year’s shorts program (Shorts in Winter) received a record number of submissions, 100, that almost overwhelmed the all-volunteer curating committee consisting of herself, Claudia and Mark [...]
By Paul Greenberg SAN DIEGO — “I may not believe in God, I wish to hell I believed in God, but I believe in the devil,” explained the reclusive and nutty musical genius Phil Spector near the end of the strangely captivating and at times disturbing documentary film, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil [...]
By Yvonne and Paul Greenberg SAN DIEGO — In response to frequent requests from Congregation Beth Israel congregants to worship in their own synagogue during the High Holy Days and because of the very special nature of the synagogue”s 150th anniversary year, afternoon and evening services on Yom Kippur were moved from its traditional downtown [...]
By Paul Greenberg LA JOLLA, Caifornia — In his ambitious, fact-filled, quick moving, visually appealing, but at times quite disturbing 2009 documentary, War Against the Weak (English, 90 minutes), director Justin Strawhand effectively traces the history of the devolution of the theory and practices of eugenics from the 1880′s to the end of World War [...]
By Paul Greenberg LA JOLLA, California–By interviewing people in the United States and Europe, including a proponent of the pure German perspective and one of his followers who tries to resist looking into the eyes or even being touched by Jews because he considers them part of the devil, farmers, leaders of churches [...]