Winston Churchill, Kermit & Janet Jackson’s Recordings Added To The Library Of Congress

The U.S. Library of Congress admits only 25 recordings to its Recording Registry, which are works that added have to have a historical and cultural significance to be preserved for posterity. This year’s list includes Janet Jackson, Winston Churchill and Kermit the Frog. Churchill’s 1941 Christmas Eve speech will be added to the Library after it was […]

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Theatre, Film & Broadcast

‘Teen Wolf’ star Arden Cho says man threatened to kill her, screamed racial slurs

Arden Cho says she experienced a racist attack in which a man threatened to kill her. The “Teen Wolf” star was walking her dog Wednesday night when the man screamed “I’m going to motherf—g kill you c— and your f—g dog,” she said in an emotional Instagram post. Cho, 35, said the man shouted other

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Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

‘Shiva Baby’ tackles Jewish mourning, comedy and female empowerment

The new film “Shiva Baby” combines the traditional, weeklong Jewish mourning period with a meshugenah love rectangle and overbearing family members. Hilarious and anxiety-inducing, the movie, written and directed by Emma Seligman is now out in select theaters and on demand, during Passover. “It’s like a sort of Jewish wake that lasts a week and

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Theatre, Film & Broadcast

MLB moving All-Star Game, draft out of Georgia following outcry over voting law

By Amy Tennery (Reuters) -Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Robert Manfred said the league was relocating its 2021 All-Star Game and MLB Draft from Atlanta, following outcry over Georgia’s new voting restrictions. The removal of the lucrative All-Star Game marks one of the most significant and high-profile protests after Georgia last week strengthened identification requirements

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Sports & Competitions, USA

SDSU Responds Appropriately to Antisemitism

At the beginning of March, another swastika was found scribbled on a dormitory wall. This was the third such incident, but this time J. Luke Wood, vice-president of student affairs and campus diversity, was on it from the start. On March 11, about a week or so after the swastikas were discovered, he sent out a tweet condemning anti-Semitism and expressing solidarity with SDSU’s Jewish faculty, staff, and students. But that was only the beginning On March 30, President de la Torre, Vice-President Wood, and Christian J. Holt, Associated Students President, distributed a campus-wide email announcing “San Diego State University’s enhanced partnership with two local organizations, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Hillel, that share our goal of creating a more inclusive community for Jewish students, faculty and staff.” [Peter C. Herman, PhD]

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San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Antisemites Should Not Define Antisemitism

As the 2016 Internal Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism continues to be adopted by organizations and universities that find it useful as a way of identifying instances of anti-Semitism—and especially the “new anti-Semitism” which couches itself as criticism of Israel—predictably, though unsurprisingly, groups that wish to continue to slander and libel the Jewish state have come out in opposition to it. [Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D]

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Richard L. Cravatts

A Word of Torah: The Final Day(s) of Passover

We are in the home stretch! Most of Passover is already behind us. Yet we contemplate the final part of the “King of the Holidays,” which also coincides with the holy Shabbos. Here, in the Diaspora, we celebrate and observe Passover for eight days, as opposed to Israel where it is celebrated for seven days. The Promised Land has a superior level of ‘organic’ holiness. The Sages found a way to somewhat compensate for that by adding an extra day of holiness outside the borders of Israel. Therefore, instead of having a single, climax-of-the-holiday day, we have two. One additional day of mundanity transformed into a day of holiness (nothing to sniff at). [Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort]

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Jewish Religion, Yeruchem Eilfort-Rabbi

Yiddish writer’s play finally to be performed in Yiddish

National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) kicks off its Yiddish Women Playwrights Festival with a virtual reading of Chava Rosenfarb’s play The Bird of the Ghetto (Der Foygl fun Geto), the first time the play will be presented in the language in which it was written, Yiddish. Audiences can stream the event at 11 a.m. (Pacific Time),  Sunday, April 18 through 11 a.m. Thursday  April 22 at 2:00 PM ET. [National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) press release]

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Jewish History, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Haftorah Reading for April 3, 2021

This is a short, entirely prose, sequence of events during the early reign of King David. It involves the ups and downs of moving the desert Ark to Jerusalem, to be housed in a tent at the City of David. The Temple, the ultimate house for the Ark, was to be built later by King Solomon. There are episodes of intrigue and hostility in this story, including within David’s relationship to Michel, daughter of the deceased King Saul, who is David’s wife. God, who punishes actors in these scenes, for innocent unavoidable setbacks, does not come across as loving or reasonable, though he ultimately blesses David and promises loyalty to his throne and successors. [Irv Jacobs, M.D.]

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Irv Jacobs, MD, Jewish Religion

Adventure story is gentle introduction to the Holocaust

This graphic novel is a relatively gentle introduction for children to the Holocaust, wherein two Polish Jewish children escape from their ghetto to the woods, where they are found by a Gentile farmer who has been working with the resistance.  In fact, the farmer has been hiding from a German search party three Partisans who blew up a train that was headed with weapons and supplies to the Russian front.  Among the brave Partisans is none other than the children’s aunt, who had left home before the Jews of their town had been moved and restricted to  a ghetto. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History

Rabbi Dosick provides advice on ‘Radical Loving’

Radical Loving: One God, One World, One People,  written by Rabbi Wayne Dosick, begins with the statement, “What an incredible time it is to be alive!”  Immediately the reader is asked to question the author’s opinion “Is it really?”  We turn the page and so begins an anecdote of a village of rice growers and how wonderful their lives are.  Then in an instant, a terrible storm causes a flood that completely destroys their village and their food supply of rice fields. Thanks to one of the village elders, the people were warned ahead of time and were able to escape to higher elevation and were saved.  The anecdote ends of course with a message:  “The village and the fields can rise up again. And the villagers can forever tell the tale.”  Rabbi Dosick is calling on the world to band together and to not forget that we are “One World, One People” and stronger together.  We the readers are the villagers and as my Aunt Nancy has told me, my generation and the next,will be retelling our tale of the 2020 pandemic to our grandchildren for years to come. [Heather Z. Rothstain]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Travel and Food, USA