- NEWS & COMMENTARY
A new era of Jewish leadership in L.A.?
Los Angeles chose Eric Garcetti as its first elected Jewish mayor, one of a number of political contests on Tuesday that reflected the city’s diversity, as well as its numerous…
Stone-walling
In the last two years, the Western Wall in Jerusalem — also known as the Kotel — has become a place of controversy as much as of worship. It’s the site of a battle that has long been waged by…
Gun violence in America: Scandal!
Two years after his mother was shot and killed, Dallas Sonnier received a phone call from the police: His father had just been shot and killed.
- HOLLYWOOD
Spielberg to produce ‘Halo’ television series, plus other news from the Xbox One announcement
Microsoft Corp gave the world a first look at its new Xbox One on Tuesday, announcing that its first gaming console in eight years will come with exclusive video and…
Justin Timberlake and Coen brothers answer Jewish questions at Cannes
Using his preternatural smoothness, Justin Timberlake saved the Coen brothers from some serious awkwardness at a Cannes press conference for their folk singer film “Inside Llewyn Davis” on Sunday. “Jewish…
Sean Penn lobbies for Charedi man imprisoned in Bolivia
Actor Sean Penn urged a congressional hearing to pressure Bolivia to release a haredi Orthodox father of five under house arrest in the country.
- LIFE & CULTURE
Sarah Silverman sings about staying home in ‘Perfect Night’
For your listening pleasure, “Perfect Night,” in which Sarah Silverman recounts the benefits of skipping the club for the couch. Because this is a Silverman production you can expect references…
Maccabi Tel Aviv back on top but coach future uncertain
Champions Maccabi Tel Aviv have reasserted their dominance of Israeli soccer but media reports on Tuesday suggested they might have to continue their revival without coach Oscar Garcia.
7 Rules for Perfect Hummus
When was the last time you opened a tub of hummus and swooned? When was the last time a restaurant put a plate of hummus in front of you, and…
- BLOGS
State 194: A Documentary About Palestine
Opening this weekend at Laemmle’s Music Hall 3 is a very hot-button new documentary called State 194, which follows the recent history of Palestine. Many will approach this film with…
7 Rules for Perfect Hummus
When was the last time you opened a tub of hummus and swooned? When was the last time a restaurant put a plate of hummus in front of you, and…
What would my Israeli grandmother think?
When I hear about the latest events in Israel – the air strikes on weapons facilities in Syria, the flare-ups over women donning prayer shawls at the Western Wall –…
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What Israel means to me
Pinpointing what makes people so passionate about Israel is no easy thing, perhaps because there are so many options.
Can journalists really be objective?
Chanukah models of courage
My 4-year-old son is obsessed with superheroes, dressing up at every opportunity as the superhero du jour to do battle with the bad guys lurking around the corner. (My 2-year-old daughter is just as enthusiastic, but at her age all she can really muster is a “meanie” face.)
Child Holocaust survivors speak up for those who can’t
Only a precious remnant of Holocaust survivors is alive today, and many of them were just children when they went into hiding or ended up behind barbed wire.
High-tech poop, gender-separate beach
Here are some recent stories out of Israel that you may have missed.
The fear of silence
It's estimated that 97 percent of Polish Jews died in the war. To this day, Geminder can't quite fathom how he ended up in the 3 percent that survived.
The indestructible spirit of Holocaust survivors
As she remembers it
Do you write from memory? Someone always asks, and I become tongue-tied and uncertain, scrambling for the words, the ways to make believable what I know will sound bizarre -- a too-complicated response where all that is required is a simple "Yes" or "No" or "Sometimes; the rest is research."
I lived in Iran for only 13 years. I remember very little -- a handful of places, a couple of dozen friends and relatives. Yet, I've spent my entire career writing about the country and its people, and I've written it all -- this is the part that's difficult to explain -- from memory.
Stories and essays and pictures illuminate holiday
Books about Chanukah.
A privilege to share
"I do not think that the Holocaust can be forgotten," Elie Wiesel said. "It is the most recorded event in history. But I am afraid it will lose its uniqueness. I'm afraid it could be cheapened, diminished, trivialized."
Books: Ruth’s Garden of Secrets
Etzioni-Halevy has focused her attention on reworking popular biblical stories, making the characters, particularly women, more alive and personable for modern readers.
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.
Noah Bleich: A Man of Many Hats
An observant Jew, Bleich provides a Jewish rationale for his commitment. While Judaism teaches that each individual is unique and special, it also emphasizes community, he says.
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.
No Rat King, no fairies—just one ‘MeshugaNutcracker’
"The MeshugaNutcracker!" tells the tale of eight citizens of Chelm, the mythical shtetl of fools, who gather every year to perform at their Chanukah festival. Through the course of the two-act musical, each tells a story of Chanukah heroes from the time of the Maccabees through today.
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.
Books: Wrap up new worlds for your young readers
Books
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."
Books: Kristallnacht’s memory revealed and recovered
Kristallnacht marked the end of Jewish life in Germany; a pivotal turning point in what later became known as the Holocaust. A generation is passing, but it is a generation that has left behind voluminous records, testimonies and memoirs, video recordings and diaries, letters and notes.
Will kill for laughs
"I Killed" features headliners like Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Jonathan Winters and Shelley Berman for the first time telling tales away from the "comedy caravans" and "yuk-yuks" and even yuckier joints they endured while perfecting their craft.
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.
Finding Deeper Truths in Fiction—the Best About Israel
One should read Israeli writers, of course -- Agnon, Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Orly Castel-Bloom, Etgar Keret. But the more appropriate template may come from fellow Americans, writers who, by exploring the Diaspora Jew's relationship to Israel, have gone down this road before.
Social Action Groups Fight for Cleaning Ladies’ Rights
When Jews hire people to do household jobs -- anybody who cleans, cooks, does the laundry, cares for children or elderly parents -- we are the ones who represent the privileged class, with the funds to hire help. Jews today are generally wealthier and better educated than the majority of Americans.
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."
7 Days in the Arts
7 Days in the Arts
7 Days in the Arts
7 Days in the Arts
The Perfect Reads for Those Lazy Days of Summer
This season brings engaging reading in a mix of genres: literary fiction, comedy, love stories, detective novels, memoirs, historical fiction and books that break genre boundaries; books by veteran authors and others not-yet well-known.
Irreverent Stories You Haven’t Heard
Why are there so many young, hip Jews writing fiction that irreverently pokes fun at their heritage?
Performers Go It Alone and Like It That Way
While each show follows its own trajectory, Chaiken points out that many Jewish-themed plays explore the issue of legacy. These performers describe conflicted feelings about their parents and the aspirations held out for them. As clichéd as such scenarios may seem, they speak to the pain and humor of family, a commonality that usually resonates with audiences.
To Tell the Truth
A little embellishment here and there isn't so bad -- creativity and a sense of humor are always great things. But there are just certain things that you should never lie about.
Converts’ Hardships Expose Truth
"I have been told not to touch the Torah and to go back to my own religion" she relayed to me matter-of-factly.
"Wasn't there anyone you could confide in?" I asked.
"I could confide in some more than others, but when it came down to it, no one really cared whether I converted or not."
Spectator - The Theme Park Without a Prayer
Bible Storyland must have a guardian angel. Dissolution by the clergy, dormancy for 45 years and a fatal fire were not powerful enough to erase the plans for this Bible-based theme park from history.
The Circuit
Circuit
We Must Treat Others With Kindness
The Haggadah tells us "you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Here is the interesting thing -- because we were strangers, we are supposed to learn not how the Israelites should have acted, but -- how the Egyptians should have acted. We are supposed to learn how not to oppress others. Don't treat others the way we were treated.
Wiesel’s Words of Hope for ‘Uprooted’
Wounds are plentiful in Eli Wiesel's "The Time of the Uprooted," an absorbing novel that moves back and forth in time, from 1940s Hungary to New York at the end of the 20th century, shifting points of view, with emotional intensity packed into memories and stories.
Love, Journal Style?
We're compiling the best stories of people who met through The Journal to run as part of our 20th anniversary edition.
Some ‘New’ Shoah Books Not So New
If there's an overriding theme among the newest books related to the Holocaust, it's one of concealment and discovery, whether in the writer's own wartime experience or invented on the page. Sometimes it's a case of lost books being rediscovered.
PASSOVER: Myriad Ways to Tell an Ancient Tale
Every haggadah has a story, its own story, beyond that of the exodus from Egypt. Depending on illustrations, design, typesetting, additions, where the edition is printed and who commissioned its creation, each version is a marker of Jewish history.
What Blacks Can Really Learn From Jews
I asked myself if Jews really are clannish and, if so, should blacks use that as a model for advancement? But more to the point, I asked myself if there were things Jews do that blacks should adopt to become more prosperous.
My answer: an emphatic yes.
At ‘Beauty’ School, Looks Could Kill
Liz Mermin's curiosity began after she read a 2002 New York Times article about the proposed school, which was backed by the magazine Vogue and volunteer Americans stylists:"I thought, 'Of all the things Afghanistan needs, how could a beauty school be anywhere but near the bottom of the list.'"
‘Gates’ Hold Key to Palestinians’ Pain
"Gate of the Sun," was originally published in Beirut in 1998 to great acclaim. Subsequently, translations appeared in French and Hebrew, and an epic four-and-a-half-hour film version, "The Gate of the Sun," directed by Egyptian film director Yousry Nasrallah, was released in 2004. The just-released English edition was translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies for Archipelago Books.
Why Are We Jews?
Wherein lies the power of the Judah personality? Is this the same Judah who initiates the sale of his brother and whose conduct in the Tamar episode raises troubling questions? Equally remarkable is the haunting silence of Judah's siblings. Why is it Judah alone who stands tall in the face of the hostile viceroy who wants to seize Benjamin? Are they not all certain of the consequent early demise of their father Jacob?
Violent Crime Rises in Israeli Society
"We talk a lot about the symptoms for this phenomenon but not enough about the causes of violence," said Gideon Fishman, head of Haifa University's Minerva Center for the Study of Youth. "If we do not explore the causes, nothing will help -- neither more policemen nor more punitive measures."
Television - Bruce Feiler’s Biblical Road Trip
The three-part "Walking the Bible With Bruce Feiler" follows the recent documentary trend of sending a charismatic host to a series of dangerous or hard-to-get-to places. Accompanied on occasion by archaeologists, scholars, Egyptologists, and theologians, Feiler tracks his way through places in the Middle East where the biblical stories of Genesis and Exodus are assumed to have occurred.
The Hebrascope: Signs of the Jewdiac
Special Report
KANCHIPURAM DISTRICT, INDIA -- The bright, clear morning of Dec. 26, 2004, would forever change S. Desingu's life.
The first monster wave rose from the Sea of Bengal without warning at 8 a.m. -- silently, massively.
For the Indian fishermen at sea, the startling energy pulse bumped harmlessly under their boats, passing in an instant. The wave started to rise ominously in the shallows.
Onshore, the 36-year-old Desingu glanced up to see a 30-foot liquid wall surging in as tall as the tops of the soaring coconut palms. The fishing craft along the shore rolled end over end, tossed as easily as playthings in a bathtub.
Too Picky
A few weeks ago, I had just returned from a trip to New York to meet someone my rabbi tried to set me up with -- a member of his
former congregation there. On my first Friday night back in shul, I was confronted by close married friends of mine with the question.
Navel Gazing With Eve Ensler
Some years ago, playwright-performer Eve Ensler became mortified by her not-so-flat, post-40s belly. She starved herself, hired a trainer and watched late-night Ab-Roller infomercials. She compulsively worked the treadmill and even fantasized about contracting a parasite.
The Great Question
"Who We Are: On Being (and Not Being) a Jewish American Writer," edited by Derek Rubin (Schocken Books, 2005), an Israeli-born professor who teaches in the Netherlands, collects 29 essays by Jewish American writers, some of which were previously published, others reshaped or written for this collection.
ADL Stokes Fear as Ploy to Raise Funds
Devoted to fighting anti-Jewish bigotry, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is America's most influential Jewish group. So what are we to make of the weird air of unreality in the ADL's public statements about Christians?
Hava Flashback
Authors Roger Bennett, Jules Shell and Nick Kroll discovered in one long B.S. session that nothing quite engaged their friends, Jew and non-Jew alike, as a trip back down memory lane to the day of their or their friends' bar or bat mitzvah.
How to Keep Your Love Alive
Couples who have created a partnership and life together consistently talk of the effort involved. Yes, some relationships seem easier than others, but all say it takes time, energy and a true willingness to face whatever comes along on their journey together.
Watch Out Ladies, Dad’s Dating Again
Sure, I've dated a fair amount, but the over-70 age range is one even I haven't yet ventured into. Don't have a clue as to what those gals have on their mind. But judging from the women I do know, I'm guessing cats and jewelry wouldn't be too far off.
The Conversation
The United Airlines agent informed us our flight from Denver to Aspen was over sold -- not everyone with a valid ticket was going to get on board.
Dozens of passengers were trying to be the ones past the gate.
Among them, lots of Jews.
A ‘Spectacular’ Summer of Inspiration
Every year during the High Holidays, my rabbi at Temple Beth Am makes an appeal for Israel Bonds to our congregation. However, this year, I suggested -- and he agreed -- that teenagers be the ones to inspire the congregation to support Israel.
Guilt Judo
A college buddy of mine -- Jewish, though not a descendant of survivors -- once observed that his family dynamics follow the rules of a sport: Guilt Judo. The sport requires a range of moves: arm-twists, throws, the art of the pin. Grace and style matter, and it is, of course, imperative to master that most fundamental skill: learning to fall without injury.
Breaking the Boredom Curse
As a child I was so bored in synagogue that I hid novels in the creases of my prayer book.
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