AAA-Writers and photographers

Below are the names of writers who are currently active.  For others, living and deceased, please type their name into the search box above the masthead on our home page, www.sdjewishworld.com

Modern Shavuot Is Not a Biblical Holiday

The current observance of Shavuot has no relationship to its biblical ancestor and doesn’t even occur at the same time. Very few people know the truth about this day. Most Jews think Shavuot recalls the day the Torah was revealed to the Israelites during the days of Moses. This is not true. This significance was given to the holiday in the middle ages when the holiday had lost one of its original purposes; the sacrifice prescribed for the day was discontinued when the second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion

Tovah Feldshuh’s True-Life Role as a Daughter

It’s hard to believe that Lilyville is a first book given its accessibility and universal appeal. This memoir of four-time Tony, two-time Emmy nominee, Tovah Feldshuh delights and delivers! Broadway performer, and television star, Feldshuh has produced an honest, loving tribute to her tour de force mother, Lily Feldshuh. [Eva Trieger]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eva Trieger, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

San Diego Native Named Director of L.A.’s Skirball Museum

Nearly four decades have rushed by since the day that Sheri L. Bernstein served as a high school docent at the San Diego Museum of Art, during which she learned all she could about one of the paintings on exhibit and recited to visitors what she knew. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Business & Finance, Donald H. Harrison, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Travel and Food, USA

Jewish Folk Remedies from the Pale of Settlement

Wait, it’s not the chicken soup, it’s the herbs that count! Eastern European Jewry, particularly those living in the area known as “The Pale of Settlement,” on the western side of the Dnieper River, in present-day Ukraine, whose history there began in the Middle Ages, have a “long and distinguished canon dedicated to the healing process,” a research area unfortunately ignored, by-and-large, by sociological scholars. Cohen and Siegel, in their joint venture Ashkenazi Herbalism, describe the history and role of plants and herbs employed by Ashkenazi folk-healers, piecing together sparse, fragmented sources, and weaving them into an engaging story. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International, Jewish History, Science, Medicine, & Education

Neighbor Competed for an International Piano Prize

Some fifty years ago the International Piano Master Competition honoring pianist Arthur Rubinstein was established in Israel. Every three years (four years in 2021 due to the Coronavirus pandemic), young pianists from all over the world compete in front of audiences in Israel  for the prizes awarded by an international jury in the framework of the competition. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Sports & Competitions

By Our Actions We Choose Blessings or Curses

As this third book of the Torah, the middle book, comes to an end, we are given nechemta, with a hopeful view of future generations. The parasha tells us, “If you follow My statutes and observe My commandments and perform them, I will give you rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit. Your threshing will last until the vintage…and I will grant peace in the Land…You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you…” [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell

Satire: Vacation after Vaccination

Hello suitcase, my old friend.
I’ve come to pack you once again.
Because I’ve had two vaccinations                                                                                                                   
I can now take a vacation. … {Satire by Laurie Baron, Ph.D]

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire