Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Our Shtetl San Diego County: Jewish Community Foundation’s Leadership Transition

Beth Sirull completes her tenure as CEO of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego on March 15, when she will be succeeded by Jeremy Pearl, who currently is the foundation’s chief financial officer. [SDJW Staff]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, California, Israel, Obituaries & memorials, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Travel and Food, Trivia, Humor & Satire, USA

Ukrainian Jewish Asylee Now in San Diego Tells Her Story

Written with humor as well as heart ache, Jane Muschenetz touches in All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents on her raw feelings of becoming a refugee during the Russian invasion of her home country, Ukraine, and being transplanted to San Diego. [Pennell Paugh, East County Magazine]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Lifestyles, San Diego County

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Chaim Potok

In 1967 Potok published The Chosen, and in 1969 a sequel The Promise, which helped delineate differences between Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.  The Chosen was made into a film in 1981.  In the interim,  the Potoks moved to Jerusalem in 1970, returning to the states in 1977.  Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev was published in 1972. [SDJW staff]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel, Jewish Religion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Today's Jewish Birthday, USA

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Barbara Myerhoff

Following advice to “study your own,” Myerhoff began fieldwork on the elderly Jews at the Israel Levin Center in Venice, California, resulting in a 1977 Oscar-winning short documentary film, Number Our Days, and in 1979 a book of the same title. [SDJW staff]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Today's Jewish Birthday, USA

Jackie Gmach Utilizes the Arts to Teach Lessons of the Holocaust and the Tree of Life Synagogue

That drawing inspired Gmach to develop “We Are The Tree of Life,” a project focusing on Holocaust education utilizing the arts to promote a message of hope and survival. Literature, music, dance, poetry and drawings created by prisoners in the concentration camps and ghettos during World War II show that beauty can survive, even when experiencing unspeakable horrors. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, Holocaust, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Judy Blume

Blume’s fight against the book banners, led to her becoming active in the National Coalition Against Censorship. Her treatment of menstruation, masturbation, teen sex, and birth control in different books have prompted calls for their banning. In 2000, the Library of Congress named her a “Living Legend.” [SDJW staff]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Fiction, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Today's Jewish Birthday, USA

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Martin Buber

In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du, which was translated into English as I and Thou. Ich-Du relationships involve the concepts of ‘encounter,” “meeting,” “dialogue,” “mutuality,” and “exchange,” where as in Ich-Es (I and It) relationships, there is no dialogue or exchange, there is only monologue. Other things or people exist only to serve the interests of the individual in question. [SDJW staff]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Holocaust, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Today's Jewish Birthday, USA

Theresienstadt Opera Remembered in ‘Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis’

Together with Peter Kien, who wrote the libretto, Ullmann composed the music for an opera entitled ‘The Emperor of Atlantis,’ an allegory of the Nazi regime, in which Death goes on strike in protest at the widespread killing of human beings by a power-mad ruler. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Holocaust, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jerusalem Library Receives 45,000 Jewish Manuscripts from Yemen

The items were endowed to the museum last Thursday by the family of the late Yehuda Levi Nahum (1915-1998), a Yemenite Jew who immigrated to pre-state Israel in 1929 at the age of 14. Over six decades, Nahum assembled the world’s most extensive collection of Yemenite-Jewish manuscripts. [JNS]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East

Our Shtetl San Diego County: Groundbreaking Tuesday for Jacobs Performing Arts Center at Liberty Station

Mayor Todd Gloria will speak at groundbreaking ceremonies Tuesday, Jan. 23, for the future Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center that will be built at Liberty Station in a renovated Naval Building 178. [SDJW Staff Report]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, California, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Obituaries & memorials, Philanthropy & Volunteerism, San Diego County, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Samples Published Here of the Poetry of Adam Deutsch, Amelia Glaser, and Herb Brin That Were Recited During a Lawrence Family JCC Program

The poetry of Adam Deutsch, from his newly published book, Every Transmission, opened the January 16 program of Jewish Poets/Jewish Voices.  The youthful looking Grossmont College faculty member had arrived at the JCC using the trolley and his bike. His well-received selections were followed by translations from Yiddish and Ukrainian and original poems by Amelia Glaser, UCSD chair of Judaic Studies. The concluding portion of the first hour of featured poets was the poetry of Herb Brin. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, San Diego County, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Our Shtetl San Diego County: Homeless People Living in Their Cars to Have ‘Comfort Facility’ at Jewish Family Service Venue in Kearny Mesa

Once completed, the new Liebermensch Family Comfort Facility will be equipped with ADA-accessible showers, baby changing stations, and full-sized restrooms—providing guests a welcoming space to care for themselves and extra room to get ready for work and school. [SDJW staff]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Shanda File, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Our Shtetl San Diego County: Turning the Grading Tables on Local Universities

The shoe will be on the other foot for San Diego State, UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, the University of San Diego and other 4-year colleges and universities throughout the nation. The Anti-Defamation League has announced it is “developing a new tool to evaluate the climate of antisemitism on individual campuses.” [SDJW staff]

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Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Israel, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Sports & Competitions, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Travel and Food, USA