The Nimoys: A father and son, with space between them

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

‘Mission’ accomplished for hybrid composer Lalo Schifrin—with new book and CD

By Rick Schultz

"It's the harmonies of Ravel and Debussy that attract jazz musicians," he said. "I once showed Dizzy Gillespie Ravel's 'Histoires naturelles' for voice and piano. He heard one passage and said, 'Oh, this will go well with Monk's 'Round Midnight.' From then on we had to play it with the Ravel chords."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

New books challenge readers to revitalize their Judaism

By Sandee Brawarsky

Sounded every morning during this month of Elul, the shofar is a call to review, rethink, renew, revitalize, to shake things up a bit, to go deeper. This season, a number of new books also challenge readers to think anew about their connection to Judaism and to Israel, to their ritual practice and religious lives.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Young Manhattanite’s diary of old is new again

By Sandee Brawarsky

She learned that her building was expanding its bike room and had cleaned out an area where these trunks, whose owners had moved on, had sat unopened for decades. Amid the chaos, a building porter told her that he had found a young girl's diary and gave her the small book with its crackling leather cover and chrome lock.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Not your average ‘schlub’—a memoir

By Marissa Brostoff

Max Gross, by his own admission, used to be your average schlub: He sported an unkempt Jewfro, the bottoms of his jeans were tattered and he'd gamely put a good burger before a diet.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Q&A with author Jonathan Kirsch: Is Bush bringing back the Inquisition?

By Brad A. Greenberg

I did say in my book that many of the same rationales that are articulated by the Bush administration and the Bush Justice Department were first articulated by the Inquisition

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Book details journey to a father’s distant land—Kurdish ‘Jerusalem’

By Sandee Brawarsky

"My father had staked his life on the notion that the past mattered more than anything.He sublimated homesickness into a career."

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Researcher tracing Jewish genes meets the Kohanim of Africa [VIDEO]

By Peter Ephross

Dr. David B. Goldstein from Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy talks about tracking the genetic history of the ancient Jewish priesthood (kohanim) and the Lost Tribe of Israel, the focus of his new book, "Jacob's Legacy".

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Urban love story brings Berlin’s past to the present

By Sandee Brawarsky

Winger, an American who has lived in Berlin for the last five years, grew up in Cambridge, Mass., along with long periods in Kenya and Mexico, as well as New York City. The daughter of Harvard anthropologists, she picked up their skills of observation, which she has fine-tuned in her work as a professional photographer and in this beautifully written fictional debut.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Herb Gold, elder statesman of the Beat Generation, writes on

By Tom Teicholz

It was at college that he first met Allen Ginsberg. "He was 17. He was a bit crazy, and he was more eccentric than I was," Gold said.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Armageddon Survival 101

By Jay Firestone

"It starts when you open your eyes in the morning. Maybe you're awakened by the sounds of random gunfire, or the howling of souls being cast into the lake of fire," Kutner writes. "But at least it's not that godawful clock-radio buzzer."

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Waxing (Philip) Roth

By Tom Teicholz

I decided to watch every film adapted from Philip Roth's work. My mission started simply enough: a search on imdb.com turned up eight works on film and TV, stretching back to the 1950s. Some had never been released on video, some are only in VHS, some were available at the local video store, some had to be tracked down in specialty shops or in university or museum archives. My quest led me across Los Angeles and afforded me the pleasure of visiting some of the city's most beautiful libraries and research facilities, as well as some of its best-stocked video stores.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Shut up and read this book review

By Jon E. Drucker

Levey's experiences are so amusing, the uninitiated might think he made them up. As anyone who has spent considerable time in Israel knows, though, he didn't need to. Levey's cast of characters merely exemplifies the saying, "Jews are just like other people -- only more so."

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

‘Simplexity’ explains the methods to the madness

By Sandee Brawarsky

A handshake might seem to be a simple, even thoughtless social exchange. But behind the meeting of hands are a lot of neural firings, tactile feedback, control of muscles, depth perception; it's a ritual that grows out of a long tradition of greetings and social cues.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

In which the writer discovers Nextbook’s new read on culture

By Tom Tugend

"A man should live, if only to satisfy his curiosity." The Yiddish proverb, tacked to the wall of my study, came to mind when curiosity -- and the assignment to entertain my visiting young grandsons -- led me to the Nextbook festival. It's a personal embarrassment, or the fault of the organization's anti-promotional attitude, that I had never heard of Nextbook, or as its logo has it: nextbook>.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Family Doctrine: Q & A with author Jeff Sharlet

By Brad A. Greenberg

Jeff Sharlet's latest book, a terrifying read, is light on gore and heavy on religion. In "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," Sharlet offers an inside look into a secretive Christian organization responsible for not only the National Prayer Breakfast but also for promoting a macho Jesus who supports despots across the globe and opposes democracy at home.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Reversal of fortune: The Mexican immigrant shift

By Amanda Susskind

The immigration-reform debate has gripped the country and enflamed passions. Hate groups, along with mainstream media, have engaged in facile assumptions about Mexican immigration, often leading to racist stereotypes and opening the door to extremist ideology.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

AUDIO: Interview with author Rebecca Goldstein

Eric Tomb talks with Rebecca Goldstein about her philosophical studies Betraying Spinoza: Ther Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity and Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Goedel. From public radio's KVMR-FM

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Books: An enduring romance

By Celia Soudry

A Dutch beauty and the youngest of four children, she was faced with a decision no teenager should have to make -- whether or not to leave her family and home to flee her country in hopes of a better life. Similar to other young women with fantasies of love, Van Beek had developed an immediate crush on Felix, a handsome young German Jew whom she met while playing tennis one afternoon.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Comic book strip draws on historical New York

By Amy Klein

Katchor said he doesn't think there is a message to his comics -- just a model that people can contemplate. "It should send you back into the world looking at the world in some more subtle way," he said. "It's a lesson in how to look at the world."

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Converso cowboys who tamed the U.S. frontier

Among the conquistadors were Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, some of whom became America's first cowboys. Stillman writes about them -- and the horses of the conquest -- in the first chapter of her new book, "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West."

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Trolling between the lines: Collecting titles at Publishers’ BookExpo

By Tom Teicholz

The last time BookExpo was in Los Angeles, the convention floor was constantly, overwhelmingly crowded, with so many booths that the author autographing section had to be relegated to a basement hall

Monday, June 9, 2008

Comic book strip draws on old New York

By Amy Klein Religion Editor

The Lower East Side first captured Katchor's imagination at a young age. Although he grew up in Brooklyn, he often went to the Jewish immigrant neighborhood with his parents.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Royal recipes for the ‘princess’ in everyone

By Molly Binenfeld, Contributing Writer

If you ask almost any Jew "What does a Jewish Princess make for dinner?" the answer would probably be the punchline of an old joke: "reservations." Ask Georgie Tarn and Tracey Fine, however, and they'll respond with one of their unique recipes, such as Bloody Mary Borscht.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Finding Judaism in the great outdoors

By Sue Fishkoff

Two rabbis are helping Jews find a path to Judaism off the beaten track. Each has written a new guidebook to take along on that hike