Leyna Krow Assistant Editor, JTNews The routine of going out for Chinese food and a movie on Christmas Eve is so ubiquitous among Jews that it seems to have moved from the realm of tradition to cliché. But the problem remains — what to do while everyone celebrates Christmas? “There’sContinue Reading
Not one of the many American movies about the Iraq War has been made by a former soldier — until now. The Israeli-born, U.S.-based writer-director Oren Moverman earns that distinction with his powerhouse debut feature, The Messenger. The quietly riveting independent film stars Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson as casualtyContinue Reading
heists have launched a full-frontal attack with books and media appearances by confirmed non-believers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. As Lisa Miller wrote in Newsweek, they give us this choice: “Either you don’t believe in God or you’re a dope.” Robert Wright is not as virulent in TheContinue Reading
The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses by Stephen H. Norwood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). It is common knowledge that Hitler’s professors (the title of Max Weinreich’s famous book of 1946) were the first to make anti-Semitism both academically respectable and complicitContinue Reading
For the past two years, the Stroum Jewish Community Center has been enlightening opera lovers and novices alike as to the influence of Jewish themes, writers, and performance in the world of opera with its “Opera Sings the Soul” lecture series. But now the JCC has decided to broaden theContinue Reading
On the Shabbat before Simchat Torah, at the weekly Torah study at North Seattle’s Temple Beth Am, Rabbi Beth Singer asked regular participants to share their favorite Torah verse. Most offered stories from Genesis, a few noted the Exodus from Egypt while others singled out Moses’ final speech. But sculptorContinue Reading
Renowned Israeli singer Yasmin Levy has broken through as an international sensation in part because of her album Mano Suave, which is sung largely in the Sephardic language of Ladino. Levy, the daughter of well-known Turkish composer and cantor Yitzhak Levy, will make a stop in Seattle next month asContinue Reading
What would happen if 6 million Jews were invited to go back to Germany? That is what playwright Israel Horowitz asks in Lebensraum. Seattle will get the chance to witness his answer to this question when it unfolds on stage at Seattle Public Theater at the Bathhouse on Green Lake,Continue Reading
November 9, 2009 will mark 71 years since the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht signaled the public beginning of the dark years to come for Jews across Europe. As synagogues burned and the windows of Jewish-owned shops were smashed across Germany that night, one could barely imagine that within lessContinue Reading
On the eve of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, Music of Remembrance will begin its 12th season with a concert that commemorates Jewish acts of heroism during the Holocaust. The Nov. 9 fall program, “Cantillations,” incorporates contemporary pieces as well as works from Holocaust-era composers to remember the past andContinue Reading
A Serious Man, the most Jewish and the most personal film in the Coen Brothers’ 25-year career, is pitched squarely between the musical magnetic poles of Ukrainian-born vocalist Sidor Belarsky and Haight-Ashbury’s Jefferson Airplane. Belarsky’s regal, soothing tenor provides an unexpected anchor for secular Midwestern physics Professor Larry Gopnik asContinue Reading
It’s been nearly eight years since Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Pakistan. In that time, his family and friends, along with many others, have built a powerful and effective organization dedicated to his memory, The Daniel Pearl Foundation. While it goes about its educationalContinue Reading
The easygoing matriarch of a fictional Jewish family, Molly Goldberg was simultaneously the salt of the earth and doggedly Herculean. But her gently insistent persistence paled next to that of her creator Gertrude Berg. An influential yet largely forgotten figure in the annals of both American broadcasting and American Jewry,Continue Reading
Two guys whose careers are based entirely around the neuroses of Jewish families are about to hit it big. Sam Wolfson and Bryan Fogel, creators and stars of the off-Broadway hit Jewtopia are back on stages around North America, just before their creation heads to the silver screen. Their latestContinue Reading
After almost a decade, singer, songwriter, musician and choreographer Daniel Alpern has returned to Mercer Island to revitalize the Stroum JCC’s Center Stage theater program. The program is aimed at theater enthusiasts of all ages, from elementary schoolers to their parents and grandparents. Center Stage kicks off this fall withContinue Reading
Explaining Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Days of Awe, to children is both difficult and simple. Difficult, because deeper levels of spiritual understanding must await a more mature approach; simple, because even very young children can delight in the tastes, sounds and symbols of these days. Then, as theyContinue Reading
One day, early last December, many extremely wealthy people around the world, a large percentage of them Jewish, went about their business unaware that the next morning the vast amounts of money they believed they had amassed would disappear in a puff of smoke. These people had entrusted their netContinue Reading
Generations is an across-the-world e-mail conversation between 30-something writer Masada Siegel and 70-something author Stefanie Zweig. From: Masada Siegel Wed., Sept. 24, 2008 at 11:22 a.m. To: Stefanie Zweig Subject: Partying too much? Hi Stefanie! Have you been having too much fun celebrating your birthday? Have you been really annoyedContinue Reading
We are lucky to live in a time and in a society that expects each of us to fill at least some of the limitless promise with which we are born, whether we are male or female. We also know that many people fail to fulfill this promise. How doContinue Reading
It’s a fool’s errand to criticize Quentin Tarantino for historical inaccuracy or chronic amorality. Everybody knows his movies are inspired by and respond to other movies, not real life. So there’s no percentage in railing against Inglourious Basterds as blathering, self-indulgent drivel that (among many examples of its creator’s hubris)Continue Reading
