The Arts

World Beat Center honors the dream

Just north of Presidents Way and across the street from the Veterans Museum lies the World Beat Cultural Center. Housed in what used to be a water tower, this cylindrical building is filled inside and out with brightly painted murals celebrating the many cultures of the world. Inside, you will find a vegan café, an art gallery, reggae concerts and classes in the arts. What better place to celebrate Martin Luther King Day? [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County

‘Lost Book of Adana Moreau’ a Jewish story

“To answer your email, yes, my new novel does deal directly with the Jewish experience pre- and post-Russian Revolution, in Chicago during the Great Depression, and through the lens of an Israeli-American raised in Chicago decades later,” Zapata told me. “My mother’s family is Ashkenazi, originally from Lithuania, and my father’s family is from Ecuador.” [Dan Bloom]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Wosner, Thayer, Zhao shine in Beethoven’s Piano Trio

The Israeli pianist, Shai Wosner, shone in Beethoven’s Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3, as he collaborated with violinist, Jeff Thayer, concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and Yao Zhao, the orchestra’s principal cellist. The concert, part of the San Diego Symphony’s celebration of Beethoven’s 250 anniversary of his birthday, featured three of the composer’s early works. It took place on Tuesday evening, January 14, at the new Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Fay Street in La Jolla. [Eileen Wingard]

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

Auschwitz memoir revived for 75th anniversary

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, many books, documentaries and articles are appearing about “history’s darkest chapter.” The book Last Stop Auschwitz: My Story of Survival From Within the Camp, set for release momentarily, will certainly become one of the more defining accounts of the horrors and inhumanities perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. [Dorian De Wind]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorian de Wind, International, Jewish History

Gimbel’s WZC goals: ‘Pluralism, peace, economic justice’

In recent articles, we have been profiling San Diegans who have been nominated by various slates to serve as delegates to the World Zionist Congress, which will take place in Jerusalem Oct. 20-22  Among the nominees is Rabbi Jeremy Gimbel, the assistant rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Middle East, Obituaries & memorials, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Fictional weather-maker faces religious controversy

“The story goes like this,” Schwartz told me in a recent update to his earlier emails. “The main character, Neil Stephenson, is a TV meteorologist and a rising star in the Baltimore area. During a snowstorm that isn’t producing as much snow as predicted, Neil discovers his gift: that he can actually make the snow increase or decrease, and make it rain or stop raining.” That’s some superpower, as readers of the recently-published novel will find out. [Dan Bloom]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, The World We Share

Jews, Christians, Muslims to join in MLK salute

San Diegans of various faiths will gather at 8:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 20, at the Marston House in Balboa Park, at 3525 Seventh Avenue (corner of Upas) to honor the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on what would have been five days past his 91st birthday. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Obituaries & memorials, San Diego County, USA

A wall fly’s view of an intense family dinner

Stephen Karam’s drama The Humans, 2016 recipient of The Tony Award for Best Play, is currently showing at The San Diego Repertory Theatre downtown on the Lyceum Stage through Feb 2nd. I’ve said it in jest and in truth that I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall just to see what goes on behind closed doors in X Y or Z’s house. [Carol Davis]

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

‘The Humans’ speak to all of us

Thanksgiving dinner: A time for families to be thankful for one another even as they bicker about religion, politics and life-choices between forkfuls of turkey and glasses of wine. Brigid Blake and her boyfriend Rich have moved into a garden duplex in Chinatown. There are noises from above and a view of an alley filled with cigarette butts from the only window. The movers haven’t arrived with all of their stuff yet, so furnishings are pretty spare. It’s modestly pleasant by New York City standards. But driving in from the quiet suburb of Scranton, it’s not exactly what Brigid’s parents are used to. [Eric George Tauber]

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

Posthumous Holocaust memoir a family affair

Mendek Rubin was born in 1924 in Jaworzno, Poland, a town with over 2,000 Jews, about 15 miles from Auschwitz. He died in Carmel in 2012. When his daughter Myra was putting his papers in order she came across a manuscript In Quest of the Eternal Sunshine. It was a surprise and not a surprise. It was a surprise to find it, but she had already helped her father edit it decades earlier. She worked on the manuscript for a few days but the task was incompatible with raising her two children. And, “in the intervening years” she had “completely forgotten it existed.” [Oliver B. Pollak]

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

Whatever you think of ‘Ulysses,’ ‘Bloomsday’ delights

In playwright Steven Dietz’s Bloomsday, currently in a charming and reflective production at North Coast Repertory Theatre though Feb. 2nd, Robert (Martin Kildare), a handsome and rather distinguished 50-something former professor tells the audience ‘that” Ulysses is the most under-read and over praised piece of doggerel ever hemorrhaged onto the world! Don’t take my word for it.  Ask half the critics and every college sophomore on earth. [Carol Davis]

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

Welk Village revives ‘A Chorus Line’

In charge of these auditions in this show is the director, Zach, (Jeffrey Ricca) who barks out orders to this chorus of those wannabe chosen. He does this by relentlessly probing, questioning, and eliminating while all the while getting under their collective skins by having each one give a brief background of themselves as the “I Hope I Get It” mantra is chanted in the background. This is the heart of A Chorus Line. One by one Zach prods, encourages and yells out orders from some place in the back of the ‘theatre’ for information from each with the usual suspects and personalities standing out over and above the others. [Carol Davis]

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Carol Davis, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast