The Arts

House of Joy is an intriguing adventure

With the Lyceum Space arranged in a black box, centering the action, Scenic Designer Yoon Bae invites us into a world of bright colors, ornate patterns and cherry blossoms. The luxurious harem of 17th century Hindustan was paradise, employing only the finest seamstresses, cooks, nurses and … well, you know. There was always plenty of delicious food to eat and fine silks to wear. The women of the harem wanted for nothing so long as they kept their Emperor happy. Watching over the harem are trained, battle-ready female bodyguards. They must be ever-ready to spring into action. But there’s a lot more waiting than action, so the guards play little games to pass the time. Devereau Chumrau and Taireikca L.A. have a playful rapport with a musical hip-hop street swag that makes them fun to watch. The stage combat with jo sticks, ably choreographed by Ka’imi Kuoha, was like a scene straight out of Kung Fu. [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Many S.D. Jewish institutions announcing coronavirus precautions

More and more Jewish organizations in San Diego County are announcing precautions and responses to the coronavirus pandemic, including Jewish Community Foundation, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Federation of San Diego County, Jewish National Fund, Lawrence Family JCC, Ohr Shalom Synagogue, Seacrest Village Retirement Community, Tifereth Israel Synagogue, and Western Jewish Studies Association. Following in alphabetical order, is a report about each. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

‘The Super Achievers’ probes Jewish Nobelists

The Super Achievers by Ronald Gerstl reveals the remarkable disproportionate Jewish contributions to world knowledge of science and heath, and the surprisingly high number of Jewish Nobel Prize Winners in these fields. Although Jews are only 0.2% of the world’s population, Jews were awarded 24% of the Nobel Prizes in science and medicine. Similarly, while Jews account for only 2% of the American population, they received 37% of the US Nobel Prize awards in these fields. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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

A history of Gold Country Jews in pictures

Gold was discovered in January 1848 at Sutter Creek near Coloma, in what became El Dorado County in 1850. Five chapters focus on thirteen Northern California counties. Patterns emerge. Jews were attracted by the opportunities posed by the discovery of gold, but they did not go into staking claims and mining, they went into commerce, shifting from itinerant peddling into storefronts. Enterprising immigrants provided much needed supplies including dry goods at mercantile stores. Miner settlements went from canvas tents to wooden structures and ended with a degree of permanence and optimism, brick and stone buildings. Some boomtowns became ghost towns and were transformed into State Parks and Historic places. The magic word, according to Fred Rosenbaum, historian of Jewish California is “retail.” [Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak, USA

U.S. Attorney Brewer reassures Jewish community on security

U.S. Attorney Robert S. Brewer Jr. experienced  first-hand in San Diego the concerns shared by Jewish congregations around the country about anti-Semitism — a concern that prompted U.S. Attorney General William Barr to send a directive to U.S. Attorneys throughout the United States to arrange meetings with Jewish community leaders.   At a kosher lunch meeting on Wednesday sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, rabbi after rabbi — ranging from Reform to Chassidic–expressed their worries about the safety of their congregants at a time when there has been an increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes. [Our shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, The World We Share, Yeruchem Eilfort-Rabbi

Glass Menagerie resurfaces at Broadway Vista Theatre.

The play is set in the St. Louis apartment of Amanda Wingfield (Terri Park) and her two adult children, Laura (Marisa Taylor Scott) and Tom (Tim Baran). The time is 1937 and the country was in the middle of the depression. Tom works in a shoe factory (Williams sold shoes for a time) and Amanda sells magazine subscriptions from her home, much beneath her status as a genteel Southern belle when a young girl. Money is tight but hope springs eternal for Amanda, the faded yet once popular belle, as she glides around their apartment recalling her glory days as a teen growing up in the south. Her repeating and reliving her past encounters with her own ‘gentlemen callers’(seventeen in one day) fascinates Laura, who longs for a gentleman caller of her own, but it annoys the hell out of Tom. [Carol Davis]

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Awe struck by 13-year-old Israeli cellist

I felt blessed to experience the extra-ordinary talent of the young Israeli cellist, Nahar Eliaz last Saturday evening in the sanctuary of Congregation Beth Am. Her’s was meaningful music-making of the highest order, music that touched the heart and replenished the soul. There was no awareness of technique. Every pitch was perfectly in tune, every dynamic, judiciously observed, every phrase, fluently expressed with natural ease. But it was more. The music had excitement, passion, and beauty. [Eileen Wingard]

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

Works of Holocaust poets performed at LFJCC

“That was the last butterfly. Butterflies don’t live in the Ghetto” wrote Pavel Friedmann in Terezin, before he was deported to Auschwitz, where he perished in 1944. Myla Wingard opened the March 3 program in the Astor Judaic Library, Poets of the Holocaust, with an inspiring musical rendition of that iconic poem. “Never say that you are going your last way.” Those words, penned by Hirsh Glik, became the anthem of the Jewish Partisans. The Ohr Shalom Choir was joined by the audience in singing that song of defiance and hope to conclude the program in which fifteen poets were represented. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, International, Jewish History, San Diego County

Local law enforcement and Israel

Israel boycott advocates in San Diego County have been attempting, so far without success, to persuade local law enforcement executives to refuse to travel with the Anti-Defamation League for familiarization with Israeli police techniques. Tammy Gillies, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said such a push was successful a few years ago in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, “where the City Council was asked to stop organized trips to Israel by law enforcement.  They passed that and it was a shock to us. … There are organizations in San Diego working very hard and lobbying our law enforcement agencies not to send people to Israel.” [Sour shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Eva Trieger, International, Middle East, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Travel and Food, USA

A Czech woman’s journey through the Holocaust

Published  posthumously with the help of her author daughter Helen Epstein, Franci’s War by Franci Rabinek Epstein is a well-written step-by-step recounting of Franci’s experiences during the Holocaust. A dress designer of  good reputation in Prague, Franci was transported with her parents to Terezin, the Nazis’ “model ghetto” nearby.  She was able to secretly rendezvous with her first husband, Pepik “Joe” Solar, who had been arrested and sent away earlier than she was.  Soon, however, her parents were taken on another transport to their deaths, and with Joe leaving the ghetto daily to work as slave labor on a railroad spur, Franci often was left to her own devices [Donald H. Harrison]

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

Safa’s Story responds creatively to bullying

Safa is a fifth grader whose family hails from Zimbabwe. She’s precocious, curious, smart and very likable. But there’s a new kid in school, Ryan, who makes Safa the object of his taunts. Ryan isn’t hostile so much as immature. He’s “only joking,” but at Safa’s expense. And when Safa goes to the teacher for support, she’s labeled a “snitch,” which only makes matter worse. Halfway through the performance, the audience gets to weigh in, changing the outcome of the story by changing the characters choices, even stepping into their roles. We can be Safa, standing up for ourselves, her classmates being better friends or the teacher taking the situation more seriously. The one character we can’t replace is the bully. The only way to change him is to stand up to him. [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

The radio rabbi shares his greatest hits

Award-winning Rabbi Joseph Potasnik is the “Radio Rabbi,” having been on the New York airways at 1010 WINS and 770 WABC since 1972, and starting in 1999, serving as Jewish Chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. In the introductory chapter of his newest book Just Give Me a Minute, Potasnik confesses that people ask him questions about anything and everything. In Just Give Me a Minute, Potasnik shares his insights and answers. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion

SDJW correspondent publishes sixth novel

Our correspondent in Mevasseret Zion, Israel, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, has written a sixth novel, this one called A Ruffled Calm.  As with her previous five novels, Shefer-Vanson has illustrated the cover of her book with one of her own art pieces, seen to the right of this story. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish Religion, Middle East, USA

Historians, biographers probe Jewish Cleveland

Cleveland Jews and the Making of a Midwestern Community contains a pair of biographical essays, which I read with considerable interest, and more than a majority of essays of the historical type, dealing with such phenomena as the growth of Jewish Orthodoxy in Cleveland; the impact of Jewish philanthropy on that city; the growth of Jewish schools; The development of feminist ideals among Jewish women’s organizations;  Black-Jewish relations in Cleveland; suburbanization of Cleveland’s Jewish community; Reform Judaism in the Cleveland suburbs; and programs to assimilate into Jewish society refugees from the Soviet Union. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]

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