Travel and Food

By Lynne Thrope Your dining adventure can begin with a taste of Tartare, Sashimi, Carpaccio, or one of five fantastic salads. The classic Caesar rivals the Apple Salad puckered with green beans and candied walnuts drenched in a ginger orange vinaigrette. If Tartare is your thing, you can’t do better than Eddie’s V’s version marinated […]

By David Amos SAN DIEGO — When I read a book for the first time, I like to lightly mark with a pencil the important thoughts, concepts, and paragraphs I encounter. This is especially useful if it’s a subject of a personally intense interest, or one which will become a book review. Interestingly, when reading Musicophilia,Tales

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI, Taiwan — Word order matters, especially with Taiwanese names when written or pronounced in English in the US or Europe. While Washington Nationals pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民) is a famous name among US baseball fans, both the Washington Post and the New York Times now spell his name “Chien-ming Wang.” US

By Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO — This business of obesity and its strain on the American health picture, including the unfair and disproportionate and attendant drain of medical and extended care funding, is one of the key crises of our time.  Having just shed nearly 80 pounds with the supervision of a hospital weight-management

By David Amos SAN DIEGO — What a magnificent job of portraying Leonard Bernstein at the Old Globe by actor-musician Hershey Felder! I was pleased to see this one-man-show, Maestro, the Art of Leonard Bernstein on Tuesday, July 26. I have frequently written about Bernstein, and his life, which has been called “the most spectacular

By Rabbi Ben Kamin Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO — It isn’t that one is specifically sentimental about the corporate vicissitudes of this or that major book chain, though a great many real human lives are being affected badly by the downfall of Borders Group Inc.  The closing of 400 stores is about to throw

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal JERUSALEM– During this final week of studies at the Shalom Hartman Institute students had two unique opportunities: tiyulim (tours) of areas of Israel and the West Bank which reflected the material we studied, and a VIP visit to the recently redesigned and refurbished Israel Museum. I chose to participate in the

By David Amos SAN DIEGO– Somehow, on a worldwide basis, we have developed the tradition of playing lighter orchestral music during the summer months. It could be that this is stimulated by the warmer weather, the shorter attention spans, or competition with other outdoor activities. I look at it as the opportunity to entertain the

By Rabbi Ben Kamin  Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO — Even the androgynous name of the main character of this tender, sunlit motion picture, “Terri,” lends to its delightfully irresolute and thought-provoking nature.  Like a quiet drumbeat that somehow picks up its own melody, this atypical feature about a typical postmodern theme—adolescent misfits—creeps into your

By Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO — It is written in the Talmud that “the world rests upon the breath of the children in the schoolhouse.”   In the case of Caylee Marie Anthony, the two-year old whose breath was somehow snuffed out even before she ever entered a schoolhouse, before she had the chance to

By David Amos SAN DIEGO — Over a decade ago I received the following letter: “My opinion of our local classical music radio station would be a lot higher if they didn’t play music involving (Conductor) Herbert Von Karajan. This man was a prominent Nazi during World War II. They shouldn’t honor this man by