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Books: Max Apple is a bard of the background

One of the best American short story writers, Apple has just published \”The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories\” (Johns Hopkins Press), his first collection of stories in 20 years. He writes with the same playful imagination and comic intelligence as in his earlier stories, layered with irony and an infallible sense of detail.

Barri Evins: A Book Can Change the World

Each Christmas, Barri Evins and a group of volunteers give away thousands of books at Head Start magnet centers throughout the Los Angeles area. At each center, volunteers greet each child individually, ask them their age and then present them with a brand new book especially selected for them.

Holy Doubt

This week\’s Torah portion contains a story that most of us skipped in Hebrew school — the story of Dina.

Hitting the century mark doesn’t stop this translator

Dobkin doesn\’t play bingo, and she doesn\’t own a television. She occasionally attends a lecture or musical event, but generally, when she isn\’t working, she is reading, usually The Forward in Yiddish or English or The Jewish Journal. She reads without glasses, except for very small print.

Theater: All in the ‘Herbicide’ family

\”Herb is this wonderful combination of New York savvy, old school wisdom and outrageous life experiences,\” Kaminoff says. \”Imagine Garrison Keillor, only if he was a handsome Jewish guy from Brooklyn.\”

British theater group Stan’s Cafe uses piles of rice to bring statistics to life

Upon entering the museum, visitors will receive a grain of rice, representing themselves. Then, they will walk into a room filled with 300 million grains of rice – one for every person in the United States. The rice will be divided into piles, each one illustrating a statistic, such as the number of people who have walked on the moon or the millions of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. One grain of rice will stand for one person.

And there it will be, among all the piles: a large mound with 6 million pieces, representing each individual Jewish life lost in the Holocaust.

Jews in the Military: High Holidays Under Fire

Here are the stories of these American servicemen who observed the High Holidays not in conventional synagogues, but on far-flung battlefields. The worship services they participated in were often improvised and incomplete. But the jarring juxtaposition of war and prayer, faith and fear, continues to resonate with these men.

Needed: Rational Discussion

I\’ve spoken to many groups all over Los Angeles during extremely volatile times. I\’ve never seen such rudeness, narrow mindedness and just plain boorishness.

Rosenbergs’ Granddaughter Tackles Washington ‘Hill’

The Rosenbergs were executed for spying for the Soviet Union in June 1953. Their personal story was told 51 years later by their granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol, in the powerful 2004 documentary, \”Heir to an Execution.\”

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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.