Staff and Bylined Contributors

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Broncho Billy Anderson

He acted in over 300 short films, 148 of which he played the first cowboy movie star, Broncho Billy.  Many were filmed in Niles, a small town in Alameda County, California.  Today, Niles is part of Fremont, California, where there is an annual silent film festival in his honor. [SDJW staff]

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Jewish Celebrities, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Today's Jewish Birthday, USA

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Yigael Yadin

Yadin devoted himself to archaeology, winning the 1956 Israel Prize for his doctoral thesis on seven Dead Sea Scrolls, three of which his father had purchased in 1947 from a Bedouin goatherd and four that Yadin purchased in 1954 in New York.  He excavated such sites as the Qumram Caves, Masada, Hazor, Tel Megiddo, and the Judean Desert caves where artifacts from the Bar Kokhba revolt were found. [SDJW staff]

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Israel, Jewish History, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors

JNF-USA Helping to Rebuild San Diego’s Sister City in Israel, Sha’ar Hanegev

Approximately 30,000 evacuees from San Diego’s sister city of Sha’ar Hanegev and the neighboring municipality of Eshkol, both within a close distance of Israel’s border with Gaza, are returning to their homes, where they will find that volunteers from Jewish National Fund-USA have rebuilt, refurbished, and repainted some of the structures that were damaged or destroyed during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre.  New facilities are also being planned. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Israel, Lifestyles, Philanthropy & Volunteerism, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Sol Lizerbram, Sports & Competitions, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Philip Roth

Portnoy’s Complaint was Roth’s fourth novel and most controversial because of its frank treatment of sexual subjects, including masturbation.  Roth became more prolific thereafter, knocking out 26 additional works through 2010, the most notable of which was the 1997 novel American Pastoral, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  It told of a star athlete whose daughter becomes a domestic terrorist during the late 1960s. [SDJW staff]

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

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Deborah E. Lipstadt

She wrote Denying the Holocaust in 1994, later defending herself successfully against a libel suit by author David Irving that brought her name to public attention.  She won the 1994 National Jewish Book Award and an appointment by President Bill Clinton to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. [SDJW staff]

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Antisemitism, California, Holocaust, International, Israel, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Today's Jewish Birthday, USA

Kvells Keep Ringing For Steven Skybell’s Tevye in All-Yiddish ‘Fiddler’

When he first got the part in the Yiddish “Fiddler,” Skybell had studied Yiddish but he “certainly wasn’t fluent.” And at the start, only three of the 26 members of the cast spoke Yiddish. So getting ready for the show was a mammoth task, with most of the actors learning the language phonetically from tapes. [Joel H. Cohen]

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International, Joel H. Cohen, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Shakespeare with Some Contemporary Twists at Coronado Playhouse

A few things were different about this production, first the non-fairy actors wore modern dress, the part of Hermia’s father was turned into that of her mother, and the show we saw had swing actor Ruth Russel filling in for the role of Demitrius. [Sandi Masori]

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San Diego County, Sandi Masori, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast