The Arts

Five Imaginative Teenagers Win Young Playwrights Honors

While so many dreams were dashed in this crazy pandemic period, Playwrights Project refused to succumb to any hurdles. The 37th consecutive annual California Young Playwrights Contest was held, and held vigorously, with great response! The actual in-person celebration won’t occur until January 22, 2022, but the cat was let out of the bag to a select few (ahem! this reviewer) last Saturday night.  And quite an evening it was. I was made privy to the top five young writers, aged 13-17. I have covered this competition in the past, and I am never left with a sensation anything short of amazed and humbled. [Eva Trieger]

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

Tel Aviv Opera Produces a Truly Magical ‘Magic Flute’

A performance of ‘The Magic Flute’ in the evening led us to spend a day in Tel Aviv, enjoying the view of the sea from the restaurant on the sun-drenched promenade, partaking of the aesthetic delights on offer at the Tel Aviv Museum (including the delicious cakes in the coffee-shop there) and ending with a highly innovative performance of the opera. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Novel Paints Stresses on Cheerleaders Who Take a Knee

This Young Adult novel focuses on the friendship between Eleanor  (Leni) Greenberg, who is Jewish, and Chanel  (Nelly) Irons, who is African-American.  Although they are members of different religious and racial groups, the two have been fast friends since childhood.  However, the friendship comes under stress during their senior year of high school when Leni is chosen as the team’s captain, even after being out most of the previous year with an injury, and Chanel, a natural leader of the team in the interim, has been passed over. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

San Diego Symphony to Play at Nine Venues in Upcoming Season

The San Diego Symphony today announced its winter-spring 2022 concert season, offering 31 performances of classical and contemporary masterworks and chamber music from January 15 through May 28. Presented as “Hear Us Here,” the season will give the San Diego Symphony the opportunity to bring its music to a wider audience, with concerts performed at nine venues in the city and across the County, including the Symphony’s newest venue, The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. [San Diego Symphony]

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Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County

Chanukah with Some Stereotypical Yiddish Characters

In a style reminiscent of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs of Disney fame, this book, reissued for Hanukkah, features a series of unidimensional characters with Yiddish names: Noshy Boy, Kvetchy Boy, Shmutzy Girl, Klutzy Boy, Shluffy Girl, Shleppy Boy, Kibbitzy Girl, and Keppy Girl. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion

Novel Depicts Survivor’s Search for His Family

Dr. Julius Matthias, the chief protagonist of Michelle Mazel’s previous book, has managed by the skin of his teeth to escape deportation by the Nazis from his hometown in Transylvania. His wife, who had refused his entreaties to leave the town together with him, was shot and killed by the invaders during the round-up of the Jews of the town. Many years before that Matthias had sent his grown-up children to France to study, and so, left on his own, he manages for many months to make his way on foot through the fields and forests of Europe, eventually reaching Geneva, where he has friends and a bank account. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Memoir Relates How 2 Young Sisters- One Deaf, One Hearing – Survived the Holocaust Together

This joint memoir, intended for students in grades 3 through 7, tells the story of two young sisters — one hearing and one deaf — who survived World War II notwithstanding their transport as orphans from Bratislava to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, where, a year later, Renee, the older of the two sisters, was near death from typhus when the camp was liberated by British soldiers. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

People’s Need for Community Can Stir Positive Social Change

Israeli-American Shelly Tygielski is the founder of the “Pandemic of Love” movement, which champions people reaching out to each other, happy to give help and unafraid to ask for it.  However, before one can help others, one might need to engage in self-help, getting one’s priorities right, and, as the slang saying puts it, getting one’s head on straight. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Drama Depicts a Crisis of Conscience During the Civil War

The four-act play ‘Ben Byutler’ was written in 2014 by Richard Strand and conveyed the moral dilemma a Union lawyer-cum general (Richard Baird) confronted when faced with a fugitive southern slave, Shepard Mallory (Brandon Pierce), who appeared at the Yankee fort “demanding” to see the general. [Eva Trieger]

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

Documentary Film Traces Life, Works of Yiddish Poet Avrom Sutzkever

Released in 2021, Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?), a documentary that follows one woman’s journey to understand her grandfather, Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever, is resonating with audiences and having success on the 2021–2022 film festival circuit, with screenings booked at upcoming festivals around the globe, including next February’s San Diego International Jewish Film Festival. [Yiddish Book Center]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History

The Tractor that Observed Shabbat

The current selection for the PJ Library, mailed free to Jewish children whose families request, age-appropriate Jewish stories is about a self-sufficient farmer named Sarah, who knows how to change her tractor’s oil, how to handle his clutch, and the right way to switch his gears.  They were a great team, Sarah and Yitzi.  Every Friday night, they would power down and do no work until after Shabbat was over.  It was their routine for Sarah to have a sip of wine at the beginning of Shabbat, and for Yitzi to have a sip of gasoline. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion