The Arts

Ancient Greek Play Raises Some Still-Modern Questions

The late Dr. Howard Rubenstein’s Prometheus Bound was scheduled to open off-Broadway at The Tank in September of 2020, but alas: Covid. So, the publisher sent me a copy of the script for review. Rubenstein’s play is not a translation of Aeschylus but a free adaptation, which is a good thing. Translations of ancient texts often require long winded explanations of why certain references were funny or topical at the time, which audiences don’t have time for. [Eric George Tauber]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eric George Tauber, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Hershey Felder’s Intimate Portrait of Puccini

Lovers of opera know Giacomo Puccini as the composer of La Boheme, Tosca, Madame Butterfly and Turandot. Maestro Hershey Felder inhabits this persona in his latest film project: Hershey Felder Presents Puccini. Felder is world famous for his biographical portrayals of famous composers, sometimes drawing upon his own Jewish heritage for figures like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein. [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Gardens, cacti and a ring grab poets’ attention

By Eileen Wingard LA JOLLA, California — The “Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices” program featured a stellar line-up of poets for its Tuesday, March 16 program, attracting over 100 virtual audience members. The attendees were well-rewarded with the high caliber of poetry, beautifully delivered by local poets Annette Friend, Jen Laffler and Susan L. Lipson. A sample

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

Good News from Israel (March 21, 2021)

The March 21, 2021 edition of Israel’s good news includes the following highlihts:

• With half the population fully vaccinated, Israel’s Covid-19 infection rates have plummeted.
• The UK benefits from two more Israeli medical innovations.
• Many Israeli activities for Good Deeds Day – the country where it began 14 years ago.
• Israeli-designed Instagram Lite is rolled out to 170 countries.
• Israelis enjoy newly opened parks, restaurants, entertainment and sporting events.
• Kosovo opens its Jerusalem embassy.
• 1900-year-old Jewish relics discovered in Dead Sea cave. [Michael Ordman]

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Business & Finance, International, Jewish History, Michael Ordman, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Science, Medicine, & Education, Sports & Competitions, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Travel and Food, USA

A Pilot’s Love Affair With a Beautiful Israeli

I ordered this book from Bibliophile because the blurb proclaimed that its main character was a pilot who fell in love with an Israeli woman and fought for his adopted country. That, in essence, is the nub of the story, but around it surges and swells a series of events and adventures involving love and enmity, joy and sorrow, and a veritable roller-coaster of emotions for the reader, who cannot help but be drawn into this gripping tale of romance, adventure and action. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

Jewish Trivia Quiz: Tiffany Haddish

Comedian Tiffany Haddish won a Grammy award for Best Comedy Album for her album Black Mitzvah, the recording of her 2019 Netflix comedy special. In the performance, Haddish explored her Jewish heritage, something she only discovered as a young adult when she learned that her father was an Eritrean Jew. Haddish embraced her Jewish heritage and held a bat mitzvah under the guidance of Rabbi Susan Silverman, including Torah reading and a d’var Torah speech about Jacob’s ladder from the Parsha Vayetze. But Haddish was no stranger to Judaism, as she had worked since the age of 17 as a dancer and an MC at more than 500 bar and bat mitzvah parties. What did Haddish say about that experience? [Mark D. Zimmerman]
 

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Mark D. Zimmerman, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Francisco Goya at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Perhaps what is most startling about the etchings of Francisco Goya, presently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the artist’s intensity of focus, his obsession with understanding the nature of human evil. Goya was a child of the Enlightenment, and he knew what it was to see humanity as the pinnacle of creation, the paragon of animals, the embodiment of reason, “in form and understanding how like a god?” as Hamlet would say. Yet this same creature, the light of reason in the world, was capable of the most barbaric cruelty. In one series after another Goya’s etchings attempt to grasp the universality of evil, to see it as an essentially human problem to be understood in terms of our capacity for moral choice. Evil is universally human, for Goya – a propensity in human beings that is at once basic and inextinguishable. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

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Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir

Dorothea: In total, this is not the Oz I knew

The latest scandal to erupt in Israel’s literary arena has been triggered by the book published by Galia Oz, the daughter of the late, greatly-esteemed writer, Amos Oz. The memoir, entitled Something Disguised as Love, burst upon the Israeli reading public in a blaze of publicity arising from its controversial revelations concerning the behavior of Amos Oz towards his daughter. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

Op Ed: Cancel Shmancel

There’s been quite a bit of buzz about “Cancel Culture.” For some, this may be just a ploy to avoid weightier topics like economic disparity, unemployment, healthcare, and looming evictions. But it can also open up a serious discussion about who we are as a society, where we have been and where we want to go. In some ways, I can see both sides. So, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, I’d like to do a little “on one hand this, on the other hand that” exploration of who and what is being “cancelled.” [Eric George Tauber]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eric George Tauber, Lifestyles, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

West Coast Jewish Youth Recite the Poetry Within Them

Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices featured the poetry of young writers from San Diego, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon, last month.  The Internet audience for the Lawrence Family JCC sponsored event consisted of poetry lovers young and old from the entire West Coast. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Thriller Novel Tells of War, Rogue Operations on Israel-Lebanon Border

In his fourth appearance in a Joel Rosenberg fictional thriller, CIA Agent Marcus Ryker fights valiantly when he and two others making a peaceful inspection tour of the Israeli-Lebanese border are ambushed and captured by a unit of Hezbollah.  The operatives of the Radwan unit don’t know how big a prize Ryker is, thinking at first that he is an Israeli, and finding out belatedly that he is an American.  But, given that he provides them with his alias, they don’t know his real name of why such countries as Russia and Iran have put a big price on his head. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Thomas Jefferson, Religion, and the Cancel Culture

Often when I hear people wanting to destroy statues of historical figures and burn books of authors who mentioned something they considered wrong, even though these men and women also did good things and are part of our history, I wonder what they would do with the Hebrew Bible if they found out that all the men and women mentioned in the Hebrew Bible arguably did something wrong, such as King David’s adultery. The only totally innocent good man in the Hebrew Bible is Job, and that story according to many rabbis and scholars is just a parable. By pointing out the wrongs, the Torah is telling us that the biblical heroes were humans like us. The Bible does not expect any human to never do wrong. We should learn from these narratives to strive to be as good as we can be. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, USA