The Roustabouts Reprise A Favorite

Ruff Yeager and Roxane Carrasco play Anton Myrvold and Sunita Savarkar, a middle-aged couple who are still playfully in love. Their home, designed by Sean Fanning, is the warm, inviting abode of an academic filled with books and natural wood tastefully accented with Indian artwork. Anton is a professor of physics who is up for a Nobel Prize for challenging the Theory of Dark Matter. Sunita is a political activist for women’s rights who divides her time between the US and her native India, getting into what the late Rep. John Lewis called “Good Trouble.” Joel Miller and Kate Reynolds play Gray and Britt, the young PhD students who are both being mentored by Anton. They make a handsome couple, but there’s a fellowship that they both want. [Eric George Tauber]

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Eric George Tauber, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Hannah’s War: Jewish A-bomb physicist arouses suspicion

A brilliant scientist, Hannah Weiss was accepted into the top ranks of the American program at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to build an atom bomb before the Nazi Germans could. Despite the fact that she had fled Germany, where she had worked as a top physicist, or perhaps because she had been able to do what other Jews in Germany could not, American counter-intelligence agents were suspicious of her. [Book review by Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Torah, environmentalism, and political leadership

Shoftim tells us, “When you besiege a city for an extended period, to make war against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat from them, and you shall not cut them down; for is the tree of the field a man that you should besiege it?” The Ibn Ezra sees this as a statement, not a question, “Ki Haadam eitz hasadeh, the human being is a tree of the field.” He, like so many contemporary environmentalists, believes that we are intertwined with our environment. Destroy a tree, and we destroy ourselves. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell

ADL offers a high school curriculum challenging bias

The Anti-Defamation League is offering to high schools and middle schools a curriculum designed to challenge biases and to encourage students to think critically, according to George Selim, ADL’s New York-based senior vice president of programs.  “With our powerful, new civics curriculum we’re cultivating the next generation of leaders to actively participate in their communities and champion social justice.  We’re especially excited about partnering with Bites Media with their carefully curated articles which lift up and highlight the relevance of our civics lessons.” [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Bruce F. Lowitt, Donald H. Harrison, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi’s reporting biased against Israel

When Ali Velshi speaks, change the channel. Better yet, MSNBC could arrange it so that Velshi can only speak at a street corner.Saturday morning, at 9:45, I experienced an absurd, surreal display of Velshi’s creepy concept of broadcast journalism. If Velshi lived in Russia, he would fit in well writing for Pravda. He offended Jews and other supporters of Israel. Velshi strung together a string of facts and brazen lies while neglecting to supply relevant context on a news program he hosted to conjure up a not-so-creative Israel-bash-a-thon. [Bruce S. Ticker]

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Bruce Ticker, Middle East, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Pandemic ended our childhoods

We can get all teary-eyed over it, but it won’t help. The world we knew until the beginning of this year is over and will not return. And with it, it took our childhood. Until Covid-19, we were like kids wrecking up the house doing whatever they want while the parents are out on business. But Covid showed us that they’re not gone; they’re just invisible. And instead of showing up and yelling at us, they sent an invisible force with the odd name, SARS-CoV-2, aka, the novel coronavirus, which sent us home and told us to stay home. And every time we come out, it returns and lands another blow until we learn we must obey. [Michael Laitman, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles

Bubbe by the Bay

Sybil Koven, lovingly known as Bubbe to her children and grandchildren, was my dear friend. Every Saturday morning after I finished playing tennis, we would sit on her balcony overlooking San Diego Bay and gossip about our families and friends, the best and worst restaurants, politics, the symphony, religion and kitchen appliances. While we chatted, huge gray U.S.Navy ships often glided silently by, going to or from war with flags unfurled and sailors in dress uniforms proudly lining the rails at parade rest. At times they seemed so close that we could reach out and touch them. [Ira Spector]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Failing to forgive hurts you more than them

What do you do when you are offended, hurt by other people’s words or actions? I believe we all have been hurt at some point of our life, maybe betrayed, and disappointed by a friend, boyfriend, girlfriend or even a brother or sister. After any offense you might  get angry, bitter; you might start automatically to dislike that person, maybe even hate him, wish him the worst. [Rabbi Dr. Bernhard H. Rosenberg]

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Bernhard H. Rosenberg-Rabbi, Lifestyles