Fans of Hollywood screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin are likely to recognize actor Joshua Malina. Malina’s characters have historically been something of the brains in Sorkin’s workplace operations: As Jeremy Goodwin on “Sports Night,” Malina was the guy who knew how to fix any problem in the newsroom — exceptContinue Reading
On the other side of your radio, heading into the holiday season with heart suspended, I balance your need to believe I’m really there with my need to let you have the truth. So here’s the truth: I’ll be on the air on Rosh Hashanah. And on Yom Kippur. Yep,Continue Reading
To listen to Simu Lev’s Revive as background, or as a soothing way to hear Jewish music, would be missing the point. The second album from this duo of California-based Rabbi Arik Labowitz, who leads High Holiday services at Seattle’s Eitz Or Renewal congregation, and Seattleite Maxxine Smith is aContinue Reading
Atmospheric Disturbances By Rivka Galchen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24) Dr. Leo Leibenstein, a well-regarded, oft-published psychotherapist is having troubles of his own. He comes home one day to find that his lovely wife Rema has disappeared — and been replaced with a near-exact replica of herself. Leo, of course,Continue Reading
When Joshua Isaac first screened his documentary, My Left Hand, at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival in June of 2007, things were going well. His daughter had just been born a week earlier, he and his wife Kim were certain the cancer that had taken his left hand wasContinue Reading
Throughout Marvin Hamlisch’s career, which spans 40 years and includes writing hit Broadway plays, music for movies, and conducting pops concerts around the country, he has stayed true to his Yiddishe mama’s teachings: to never perform on Rosh Hashanah or Passover. “At the beginning of every new year,” he toldContinue Reading
The Band’s Visit (sony pictures) Dir. Eran Kolirin That The Band’s Visit didn’t make the cut for Israel’s nomination in the Foreign Language category in this year’s Academy Awards was something of a scandal — the movie had too much English (though it was one of three languages spoken). UnfortunatelyContinue Reading
Matisyahu is notorious for doing what he wants — from switching record companies (in 2006 he dumped the indie JDub Records for the big boys at Sony) to breaking last fall with Chabad-Lubavitch, the movement that gave him the Chasidic street credibility that helped jump-start his career. But there heContinue Reading
While the news from Israel last week was filled with grief, the truth of Israel shined as brightly as the Seattle summer sun. It reflected off the pianist Alon Goldstein, one of several Israeli regulars who come to town to play one of Seattle’s premier summer music events, the SeattleContinue Reading
From Mexico to Turkey to the Philippines to the West Bank, tens of thousands of people leave their homes every year seeking menial jobs in developed countries. They are nearly always propelled by economic necessity, but all those individual decisions have an aggregate political effect. In his unvarnished documentary 9Continue Reading
Fugitive Pieces, which screened at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 14 and 15, is based on the 1996 Canadian bestselling novel of the same name, written by Anne Michaels. The director, Jeremy Podeswa, wrote the screenplay. The film begins as the story of a Polish child named JakobContinue Reading
When people with successful careers hit 60, they often take stock of what they’ve done, make some decisions on how they might spend their so-called golden years, and perhaps figure out a way to leave their legacy. Not Moshe Cotel. Instead, this lifelong musician, composer and professor of music droppedContinue Reading
Hamdi & Maria (short) Rating: Outstanding Documentary — Israel — Subtitled This emotional short documentary work examines the efforts of Hamdi, a Palestinian father, to care for his quadriplegic daughter Maria. The car they had been riding in had suffered collateral damage in an Israeli missile attack on a vehicleContinue Reading
For most of his life, Jakob has been searching. As a young boy in Poland in 1942, Jakob watched from behind a fake wall as Nazi soldiers shot his parents dead and dragged his sister Bella away screaming. He never saw her again. So begins the story of Fugitive Pieces,Continue Reading
A view of pre-Revolution Russian Jewish life will be on display in Seattle next month. Russian piano duo Olga Skorbyashchenskaya and Konstantin Uchitel will make their Seattle debut performing a unique program dedicated to the 100-year anniversary of the foundation of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music. TheContinue Reading
This year, 800 students from 68 schools across Washington State submitted entries to the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center’s annual Holocaust Writing and Art Contest. The contest is open to students in grades 5-12 who live in Washington State. A panel of 16 judges selected the winners. Below isContinue Reading
You might call our story “The Case of the Missing Manuscripts.” It has all the elements of a great detective novel: European émigrés in Hollywood, two bitter rivals, a tragic fire, an unexpected revelation, even some forensic reconstruction. But instead of a hardboiled “private eye” solving a Byzantine murder mystery,Continue Reading
Acclaimed fiction writers Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen’s marvelous debut feature Jellyfish is an even greater triumph than Beaufort and The Band’s Visit, the excellent Israeli films that preceded it into American theaters this year. At the same time, the Tel Aviv-set film is the least Israeli of the three,Continue Reading
Yiddish culture takes the spotlight in “Ray of Sunshine,” Music of Remembrance’s May 12 concert at Benaroya Hall. The title comes from a line in Paul Schoenfield’s Ghetto Songs, which will receive its world premiere at the concert, with the composer at the piano. The concert also features the NorthwestContinue Reading
Playing renaissance music for concert audiences requires not only precision musical talent, but a dedication to tedious research. For the members of Lucidarium, it is that challenge which offers the sweetest reward when reconstructing the music of the past. The Italy-based early-music ensemble is making their Seattle debut next weekContinue Reading
