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jewish

Home and Jerusalem

The two greatest Jewish inventions of the 20th century are, to my mind at least, Hollywood and Israel. Jews founded Hollywood to help the world escape reality; they founded Israel to help Jews escape the world.

A New Blend of Chick-Lit Sleuth

Like her protagonist Sophie Katz, Kyra Davis has skin the color of a \”well-brewed latte.\” That\’s why she has spent a large portion of her life fielding comments about her ethnicity.

There was her supervisor at a clothing store, for example, who asked about her Star of David necklace, since how could Davis be Jewish when she looks black? Or all the times people have assumed she\’s Puerto Rican and lecture her on taking pride in one\’s heritage when they discover she can\’t speak Spanish.

\”Occasionally, when people ask me where I\’m from, I\’ll make up some country in Africa and act really offended if they say they never heard of it,\” Davis said.

The Many Lives of Lev Nussimbaum

Lev Nussimbaum lived as though life were theater, inventing an identity, dressing the part, shifting scenes, seeking audiences everywhere. He thought he could keep rewriting the ending, believed he could talk his way out of anything including his Jewish past, but ultimately he could not.

‘L-Words’ in a J World

Joan Nestle is one of many Jewish lesbian writers with work catalogued at ONE, an archive similar to New York\’s Lesbian Herstory Archive, which Nestle co-founded in 1973.

Funny ‘Guys’

\nIn between schmoozing with kids for his acclaimed Fairfax High documentary \”Senior Year\” in 1998, filmmaker David Zeiger hung out with the funny old guys who did lunch with his dad on Tuesdays at the Mulholland Tennis Club.

A Trivial Pursuit

You don\’t plan to become a trivia writer, it just happens. The next thing you know, you\’re a one-woman trivia carnival, packing up your trunk of battered almanacs and dictionaries and moving on to the next show.

Of One Mind

\”Blood Simple\” put the brothers on the map (Ethan quit his job as a statistical typist at Macy\’s), and the Coens went on to write, produce and direct a series of off-center, ironic, unsettling fables peopled with vividly drawn cartoon characters.

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Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.