The Arts

‘Pride and Prejudice’ sequel enchants in Carlsbad

By Cantor Sheldon Foster Merel CARLSBAD, California — On my first visit to the New Village Arts Theatre for me last Sunday, I enjoyed a spritely  performance of Miss Bennet, Christmas at Pemberley. Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon wrote this  charming sequel to Pride and Prejudice  by Jane Austin.   It is  a delightful twist on Austin’s  original

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Cantor Sheldon Foster Merel, z"l, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Editor’s E-Mail Box: December 4, 2018 (4 items)

National broadcast planned of concert for Tree of Life Synagogue massacre victims PBS will broadcast nationally WQED’s locally-produced Tree of Life: A Concert for Peace and Unity, a free community event, presented and hosted by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to honor the Tree of Life Synagogue victims and first responders. The performance, featuring Itzhak Perlman at Pittsburgh’s Heinz

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Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Weighing the ‘Tattooist’ controversy

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Do novels about the Holocaust have to be vetted before publication? It’s a good question and one that literary critics and Holocaust historians and educators have been grappling with since 1945. Now in 2018, the question remains as important as ever, and new novels about the Nazi concentration camps under

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History

Divide and conquer: the Roger Ailes story

By Pamela Pollack-Fremd SPOKANE, Washington — Roger Ailes was an intelligent, complex, and perhaps conflicted human according to the documentary, Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Alex Gibney.  From a young age his classmates in Warren, Ohio, his hometown, considered him to be witty and intelligent.  His

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Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Debate intensifies over ‘Tattooist of Auschwitz’ novel

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — As readers around the world are finding out now, the Holocaust sex-and-romance novel by the non-Jewish Australian screenwriter Heather Morris titled The Tattooist of Auschwitz is not all that the feel-good, based-on-a-true story that it says it is. Sure, the memoir published as a novel tells the alleged

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History

Editor’s E-Mail Box: November 28, 2018 (3 items)

CNN wins StandWithUs plaudits for series on anti-Semitism StandWithUs has applauded CNN for its week-long series reporting on resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe during November, 2018. CNN commissioned a poll of over 7,000 European adults that found, “Anti- Semitic stereotypes are alive and well in Europe, while the memory of the Holocaust is starting to fade… a third

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

You’ll gladly pay the ‘price’ for this Chanukah book

By Mark D. Zimmerman MELVILLE, New York — “What?,” you say? “A Chanukah trivia book? I don’t get it. I mean sure, RASHI, RAMBAM and HAGGADAH-LAMADINGDONG, the Passover trivia book, makes sense. It’s a holiday that’s totally based on asking four questions. So why not ask 25 more? But Chanukah? No point in asking questions

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Mark D. Zimmerman

Stan Lee’s heroes, like our patriarchs, overcame flaws

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel CHULA VISTA, California — Whenever we talk about the protagonists of the Bible, we must remember that every biblical actor’s character evolves in the course of a lifetime. What each person starts out differs from what each one ultimately becomes. In the latter half of Genesis, the ancient storyteller lavished

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Editor’s E-Mail Box: November 26, 2018 (4 items)

SDSU Jewish Studies Program sponsors Chanukah concert Dec. 4 San Diego State University’s Jewish Studies Program will present a Chanukah concert, “Shimmering Lights,” featuring Yale Strom’s Broken Consort at 7 p.m., Dec. 4, in the Smith Recital Hall. Strom, who serves as artist in residence for the Jewish Studies Program, says the concert will include

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International, Jewish Religion, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego Calendar, USA

More doubt cast on Auschwitz tattooist novel

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — A bestselling novel about the Holocaust has generated a strong backlash from readers around the world, and most importantly, from the Auschwitz Museum in Poland, which maintains an internet and Twitter presence online. After many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, sent in messages to the museum concerning the veracity

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History

Redefining who can become a Jew

The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World by Robert H. Mnookin; © 2018; Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group; ISBN 9781610-397513; 228 pages plus 80 pages of notes, acknowledgments and index; $28 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO –Author Robert Mnookin, a Harvard Law professor, argues that Jewish peoplehood should have permeable boundaries.

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Middle East, USA

Is it India or is it Gehenna?

Mother India by Tova Reich; ©2018; Syracuse University Press, ISBN 9780815-611066; 253 pages. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – If you walk through ankle-deep sewage overflow while batting away flies and choking on ashes of incinerated human remains, you’ll experience the India of author Tova Reich’s description.  You probably would prefer to visit Dante’s

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

A concert in the Kunewalder living room

By Eileen Wingard SAN DIEGO — The vivacious pianist, Ines Irawati, welcomed the overflow crowd in Monique Kunewalder’s living room before her partner for the Piano Duo Recital, Daniel Wnukowski, introduced their first selection, Dance Macabre by Saints-Saens. This transcription for two pianos from the orchestral original was carried off with crackling demonic fervor, and Wnukowski’s

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