The Arts

‘A Paris Love Story’ is an Art de Triumph

A Paris Love Story, Hershey Felder’s one-man play, streamed from Florence, Italy, takes its place beside his other memorable dramas with music based on the lives of famous composers. This time, the main character is the French Impressionist, Claude Debussy. In addition to the life of Debussy, Felder manages to weave two additional threads into the story, his personal Paris Odyssey, pursuing Debussy’s footsteps, and Felder’s love for the City of Lights. Much of the story takes place as the 19- year-old Felder strolls along the Champs Ellysees, and the Seine River, to beyond the Arc de Triomphe, in pursuit of the residence where Debussy once lived. [Eileen Wingard]

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Eileen Wingard, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Symphony, San Diego Rep give socially distanced performances

Two San Diego downtown theaters were illuminated last weekend, with live performances streamed from their audience-less venues. All the players, except the vocalists and wind players, were masked when performing, and all were seated at least six feet from one another. On Friday evening, in Copley Symphony Hall, the San Diego Symphony, under the direction of its Music Director, Raphael Payare, presented Together Apart: Strings, Winds, and Brass, featuring the orchestra in smaller groups; and Saturday evening, at the Lyceum Theatre, the San Diego Rep’s Lipinsky Jewish Arts Festival presented Jews, Jazz and Justice, curated by Yale Strom. Both programs are still available for viewing. [Eileen Wingard]

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Eileen Wingard, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County

Jewish Clergy Lobby Congress to Combat Hunger

Some families are preparing for Thanksgiving meals from which relatives and close friends will be absent because of the coronavirus pandemic.  At the same time, other families aren’t even even sure they will have enough to eat on Thanksgiving or any other day as a result of the growing hunger and food insecurity around the country, according to officials of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, USA

Was Chaucer an Anti-Semite?

One of the tales that is told in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is the controversial story told by a prioress called “The Prioress’s Tale.” A prioress is a woman who is head of a house of nuns. She is next in rank below an abbess. She is seemingly a religious person with religious ideas. Chaucer describes his prioress in his book in two ways. She is introduced in his Prologue as an aristocratic, genteel, pious nun, but the story she tells shows her demeaning Jews and stating that Jews drink Christian blood in a Jewish ritual. She describes how Jews were rounded up, treated brutally, and then murdered by the Christian community. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish History

S.D. Jewish Men’s Choir To Debut Album Dec. 6

Talent and technology will be put on display at 5 p.m., PST,  Sunday, Dec. 6, when the San Diego Jewish Men’s Choir posts on line its ten-track legacy album featuring songs in Ladino, Hebrew and Yiddish.  The free concert, accompanied by a Power Point presentation, will be carried on the choir’s Facebook page, which may be accessed via this website. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County

Mapping the Bible, Correcting Misconceptions

The book Places in the Parasha is a very good book, with chapters for each of the more than fifty Torah readings in synagogues on the Shabbat as well as the special readings on holidays. It identifies the location of places mentioned in the portions and gives us information about these places. As a result, we learn more about what the Torah is saying and get a deeper understanding of the events that are mentioned. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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

Rebuilding lives in a TB Sanitarium

The main theme of ‘The Dark Circle’ is the battle with TB (tuberculosis) of the characters depicted in it, just as the miracle medicine of antibiotics, known then as Streptomycin, is beginning to appear on the world stage, bringing with it the promise of salvation from diseases formerly considered incurable, even fatal. While the wider context of the book is 1950s Britain, with its entrenched class differences, prejudices and post-war restrictions, the immediate environment in which the narrative develops is a custom-built sanatorium intended to cure its inmates, or residents. [Book review by Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Science, Medicine, & Education

San Diego Dems Endorse Montgomery Steppe for City Council President

By a 4-1 margin, members of the San Diego Democratic Central Committee endorsed City Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe to serve as the next president of the San Diego City Council, rejecting the candidacy of  her fellow Democrat, Dr. Jennifer Campbell.  Montgomery Steppe represents the 4th Council District, and Campbell represents the 2nd District.

The vote Tuesday night came after Montgomery Steppe was endorsed by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, Councilwoman Vivian Moreno, and outgoing Council President Georgette Gomez, The Voice of San Diego reported. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Israel demands CNN anchor apologise after comparing Trump years to Kristallnacht

Israel has demanded that a CNN anchor apologises for comparing US President Donald Trump’s actions to the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews in 1938, also known as the Kristallnacht.”This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Christiane Amanpour said in a live broadcast on CNN on Thursday. “It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow

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International, Jewish History, Middle East, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

‘Mostly Mishegas’ Satirizes Trump’s Jewish Knowledge

The idea that Donald J. (“John,” not “Jewish”) Trump would even consider converting to Judaism is, on its face, outrageous. Then again, Joel H. (“Hugh,” not “Hebrew”) Cohen, has plenty of outrageous thoughts about the 45th president of the United States and has, in the past, humorously and unapologetically expressed them in these pages of the San Diego Jewish World in his column, “Just Kidding.” [Bruce F. Lowitt]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Bruce F. Lowitt, Donald H. Harrison, Joel H. Cohen, Trivia, Humor & Satire

‘Paper Bullets’ tells of lesbian resisters in Nazi-occupied Jersey

Avant-garde artists Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe advertised the fact that they were stepsisters, and hid the fact that they were lovers; their practice in deception  useful in hiding their World War II roles as anti-occupation propagandists in Nazi-occupied Jersey. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

SD Rep Lineup: Strom, Feldshuh, Felder

The San Diego Repertory Company is presenting two remarkable virtual music events this month.

JFest (Lipinsky Jewish Arts Festival) will be hosting  the 19th Annual Klezmer Summit at 7 p.m., Thursday evening, Nov. 19  featuring Yale Strom’s band, Hot Pstromi, in their first concert as a full band since the onset of Covid-19. Hershey Felder will be featured in Paris Love Story, streamed  from his home in Florence, Italy, for four performances, at 5 p.m., Sunday, Nov.22, and at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 23, through Wednesday, Nov.. 25. [Eileen Wingard]

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Eileen Wingard, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast