Two delightful books about challah from Kar Ben Publishing are on our list for this week’s book reviews. These are fun and so different from each other, your child will love them both. [Marcia Berneger]
Making reading a Challah-day Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Marcia Berneger
Zoom services may be good, but those in the open air are better in the opinion of Rabbi Mendy Begun of Chabad of Chula Vista. With what he hopes will be the help of other Jewish congregations, the rabbi plans to put on a free second night of Rosh Hashanah shofar blowing and concert by Cantor Daniel Moreno in Cottonwood Park in Chula Vista. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]
An outdoor Shofar service for 2nd night Rosh Hashanah Read More »
Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Travel and Food
The star of the first half of this year’s pared-down Summerfest of the La Jolla Music Society was indisputably, the Israeli-born director, pianist Inon Barnatan. He was featured in all the selections on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. His playing was consistently well-calibrated and balanced with his string collaborators and musically distinctive in its beautiful phrasing and dynamic shadings. His string colleagues were no less distinguished. [Eileen Wingard]
Pianist Barnatan stars in LJMS Summerfest Read More »
Eileen Wingard, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts
Another extraordinary piece, Circus Maximus (2019) is one that I so deeply admired from the moment I saw it complete, for its vitality, its de-centered yet exquisitely balanced structure, its thematic unity, and vibrant palette, its countless intertwining stories – I so wanted my kids to grow up with this lively and inexhaustible work that Anderson kindly let me have it and pay it off gradually. He told me he had been collecting the materials that went into it for seven years, which could hardly be doubted. Michael waited until it had become something of the past and then he created this epic tribute to the circus world with all its zaniness, its indefatigable physicality, its costumes and clowns with their joviality yet frightening undercurrents, the animals, elephants, and lions, and so much more. The circus always struck me as a theme for which Anderson’s art was destined, perfectly suited to his unstoppable talent for deconstruction and recreation – here was a subject the content of which he could explore, take apart and endlessly reconfigure in his inimitable style. Anderson could in life play the clown, laughing or crying, for he was not afraid to show his tears – but he was most truly, I believe, the tightrope walker: always living on the edge but with supreme skill, and poise, and his own style of grace. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]
In memory of Michael Anderson, collage master Read More »
Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sam Ben-Meir
I recently watched the documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution on Netlix. It begins in 1971 at Camp Jened, a summer camp in the Catskills for people with disabilities such as blindness, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, parapalegia, dwarfism …etc. What made Camp Jened different from other camps was that the campers weren’t held to lower standards. They all swam and played baseball. Whatever it took to make them full participants in the camp experience, they did. And they all had a voice, speaking their minds in open fora that could last into the wee hours. For many of them, this meant being treated as equal human beings for the first time in their lives. [Eric George Tauber]
‘Crip Camp’ Espouses Jewish Values Read More »
Eric George Tauber, Theatre, Film & Broadcast
This memoir is approximately 320 pages of despair, and 30 pages of hope and forgiveness. If you are depressed, or feel nobody can understand the troubles you have, you might take solace in this book, knowing that someone else has suffered through deep psychological pain and has emerged on the other side. Reading it made me wonder if listening, as I was doing in the form of reading, without making any comment, was what it must be like to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I listened and listened as author Kott vented and eventually came to some decisions about herself. Sometimes, I think, the greatest gift we can give someone is to be a quiet audience. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]
Memoir relates childhood trauma, eventual recovery Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison
This book describes “a battle that pits viral biology against human intellect and capability.”
An exciting approach to generating treatments for Covid19 is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Taking the known structure of the virus, scientists are able to inquire as to susceptible target sites on the virus for creating drug treatments and vaccines. The goal: theoretical structure and synthesis of biomedical compounds to achieve therapeutic results. [Irv Jacobs, MD, MPH]
COVID-19: Medical breakthroughs, research cooperation Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Irv Jacobs, MD, Science, Medicine, & Education
A sincere group of people in the movie making industry felt the need to rekindle ties to their Jewish heritage. Aware they had a special talent and perspective to bring to religious worship and celebration of God, they formed their own synagogue up north in Los Angeles. They chose an ordained rabbi from the movie business who was a producer and scriptwriter to be their spiritual leader. He graduated from the same high school as myself, Thomas Jefferson in Brooklyn New York. [Ira Spector]
Entertaining God, Hollywood style Read More »
Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Trivia, Humor & Satire
This is a story well told, except that you won’t know any more about the identity of the Mafia boss after reading this book than you do now. Whoever he was, he took a liking to Helen Pinczewski, Solomon’s hardworking mother, after she and her husband David opened a candy store in an Italian section of Brooklyn. He made it his personal mission not to allow any of the tough guys in the neighborhood to harass the couple, for whom he developed a great sympathy after learning they were Holocaust survivors. From my point of view, there were three important takeaways from this biography. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]
Three takeaways from Holocaust, Immigrant biography Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, USA
The pandemic quarantine began in mid-March. One week later, my mother died in her sleep. She was 97 and lived in New York. I live in California. Our New York daughter “Zoomed” mom’s graveside funeral and we sat shiva online. So much of this time has been trying and sad. We miss our grandkids—even though we see them on FaceTime or Zoom almost every day. And we will forever regret not being able to say a proper good-bye to mom in person. [Irv Kass]
Daily Zoom shul-hopping to recite Kaddish Read More »
Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USARuff Yeager and Roxane Carrasco play Anton Myrvold and Sunita Savarkar, a middle-aged couple who are still playfully in love. Their home, designed by Sean Fanning, is the warm, inviting abode of an academic filled with books and natural wood tastefully accented with Indian artwork. Anton is a professor of physics who is up for a Nobel Prize for challenging the Theory of Dark Matter. Sunita is a political activist for women’s rights who divides her time between the US and her native India, getting into what the late Rep. John Lewis called “Good Trouble.” Joel Miller and Kate Reynolds play Gray and Britt, the young PhD students who are both being mentored by Anton. They make a handsome couple, but there’s a fellowship that they both want. [Eric George Tauber]
The Roustabouts Reprise A Favorite Read More »
Eric George Tauber, Theatre, Film & Broadcast
A brilliant scientist, Hannah Weiss was accepted into the top ranks of the American program at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to build an atom bomb before the Nazi Germans could. Despite the fact that she had fled Germany, where she had worked as a top physicist, or perhaps because she had been able to do what other Jews in Germany could not, American counter-intelligence agents were suspicious of her. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]
Hannah’s War: Jewish A-bomb physicist arouses suspicion Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison
Here are streaming lectures and programs of specific interest to the Jewish community from Sunday, Aug. 23 through Friday, Aug. 28 [Laurie Baron, Ph.D]
Streaming Jewish Programs, Aug. 23-28 Read More »
International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Lawrence Baron, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Sports & Competitions, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA
One Friday night, when my grandchildren tried to tell me a joke (in Hebrew) and my sole response was to point out the linguistic fallacy involved, it dawned on me that I had become an old curmudgeon. And a bilingual one at that. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]
Becoming an Old Curmudgeon Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East