The Arts

Southern Belles Tolling Among Many Delightful Roustabouts Accents

If your objective is silliness and hilarity, you will be unable to escape both at the Roustabouts return to LIVE theater with “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls.” This collection of skits was penned by Christopher Durang, legendary playwright and Tony award winner. The brilliant cadre of actors could only be improved by being complimented by Artistic Director, Phil Johnson. [Eva Trieger]

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Eva Trieger, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Music Was The Flashlight: A Profile of Yale Strom

Strom is known in the modern Jewish world, and certainly around San Diego, for his accomplishments as a violinist, composer, filmmaker, writer, photographer, and playwright. He’s conducted significant research in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans among the Jewish and Roma communities, as well as toured with his klezmer band Hot Pstromi Trio. They compose their own New Jewish music combining klezmer with Chasidic nigunim, Roma, jazz, classical, Balkan and Sephardic motifs. [Danielle Levsky]

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Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Journalist Documents Little Known Concentration Camp Near Paris

French journalist Anne Sinclair confesses she had long felt guilty about not asking her late paternal grandfather Léonce Schwartz to tell her about his internment at a little-known concentration camp on the outskirts of Paris.  Known by the French as the Royallieu-Compiegne Concentration Camp, and by the Nazi Germans as Frontstalag 122, it was not as well-known as Drancy, the notorious French transit point to the Nazi killing camps in Poland.  However, the prisoners there were treated just as callously.  Starvation, lice, frostbite were common ailments purposely neglected by the Nazis in their effort to humiliate and winnow the French Jewish population [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History

After-Effects of Children Witnessing War

Yalom’s goal was “to understand the effects of…wartime experience on children living in Europe and the United States.” Her six friends provided intimate vignettes of terror, trauma, aerial bombing, bomb shelters, and hunger. They endured and became accomplished, but not unscarred, They are likely “the last individuals who can remember World War II” and they will soon “vanish.” She explored the concept of witnesses in her 2015 work, Compelled to Witness, Women Memoirs of the French Revolution. [Oliver Pollak

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak

One Poet Mourns Earth; Others Sing Songs of Immigration

The 14th season of Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices launched last Monday evening with an outstanding program that attracted 70 attendees on Zoom. It opened with poetry read by local psychologist and poet, Richard Alan Schere. A sample of his offerings, Echo, can be read below. It is a poem that should be on the desks of all politicians as they contemplate their actions regarding climate change. Other Schere poems showed a lighter side with a fine-tuned sense of humor. Schere has made recordings and his work is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. We were fortunate to have such an accomplished poet open our series.  [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, San Diego County

Dolly Parton Inspired the PJ Library Program for Jewish Children

Jewish books from the PJ Library are mailed free every month to 680,000  Jewish children to be read to them at bedtime by their parents or guardians.  Yes, you can thank Harold  Grinspoon, the Massachusetts real estate entrepreneur who funds much of this philanthropy, along with Winnie Sandler Grinspoon, his daughter-in-law who serves as president of his Foundation. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Judaism, Lifestyles, USA

Sampling Israel’s Ethnic Groups and Restaurants

Author Ethan Michaeli is an American journalist with a knack for schmoozing with people wherever he goes.  While he lives in Chicago, his older brother and parents live in Israel. He travels frequently to Israel to see his Hungarian-born parents and his brother, and whenever he does so, he likes to go touring around the country, meeting people from as many different backgrounds as possible. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Middle East, Travel and Food

Gaming Site, ‘Torah Live,’ Enlivens Jewish Education

Torah Live’s graphics, animation and film level are highly professional and their team of men and women includes over thirty scriptwriters, animators, video editors, and sound and special effects artists. While the world was in lockdown, Torah Live kicked in big time. Since Covid over a million and a half videos have been viewed, and the website has been accessed by 168,000 active users. It has hundreds of thousands of viewers from around North America and the world, including in Moscow, Paris, London, Australia, and South Africa, and including 117 in San Diego, a number the Torah Live people hope will continue to grow. {Toby Klein Greenwald]

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International, Jewish Religion, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Toby Klein Greenwald, USA

‘She The People’ Comedy Heads West to San Diego

This cutting-edge comedy has been delighting audiences in Toronto, Boston, Washington DC, and Chicago over the past three years, and now the Lyceum will host this group of world-famous comedic stars.  The Washington Post described this show as a “funny, fiercely political comedy-sketch show.” This script is written and performed by an all-female troupe and pokes fun at the female experience, attendant stereotypes, and common experiences. [Eva Trieger]

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Eva Trieger, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA