By Michael Fox , Special to JTNews The pioneering Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem was born in a shtetl in the middle of the 19th century, and even today his name is synonymous with the Old Country and a vanished way of life. Blame Fiddler on the Roof, which was adaptedContinue Reading
By Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf, other Toronto filmmaker Naomi Jaye is set to produce Canada’s — and possibly North America’s — first Yiddish feature film in more than 70 years. Jaye, 38, has spent the past four years scripting and developing her film The Pin. It’s the story of an elderly, isolatedContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews ColumnistContinue Reading
By Michael Fox, Special to JTNews The astonishingly cheeky French screwball comedy The Names of Love willfully takes on the most sensitive issues from a single, calculated direction: Head on. With unbridled enthusiasm and fearless wit, co-writers Michel Leclerc (who also directed) and Baya Kasmi cover the political-cultural spectrum fromContinue Reading
By Corey Salka , Special to JTNews “What God is trying to do with this world is to figure out who he is through us,” music sensation Matisyahu told the campers at Camp Solomon Schechter. “That’s really what Jewish mysticism says.” Matisyahu, known for his fusion of reggae, hip-hop andContinue Reading
By Dvora Meyers, JTA World News Service NEW YORK (JTA)—Late last year, I spent the better part of a month working on a lengthy profile on Amy Winehouse, the British Jewish retro soul singer who tragically died over the weekend at 27. It was in the doldrums of this process,Continue Reading
By Ami Eden, JTA World News ServiceContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews A funny thing happened while I was reading David Bezmozgis’s new novel The Free World (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $26). I went out for beers with a few folks and it came up that one of the women in our party had emigrated from the SovietContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews When Michele Yanow and Mary Pat Graham heard Kol Dodi, the Metro-West Jewish Community Chorale of New Jersey perform “Not in Our Town,” “we said, “˜We have to sing this song,’” said Yanow, founder and executive director of the Seattle Jewish Chorale. The piece byContinue Reading
By Herb Krohn, Special to JTNews The Seattle International Film Festival is underway through Sunday, June 12, 2011. Information and tickets can be found at www.siff.net as well as the SIFF Box Office on the second floor of Pacific Place and SIFF Cinema at the Seattle Center on Mercer Street.Continue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews Four years ago, during an interview with JTNews while waiting for the post office to finally deliver the boxes filled with copies of the first edition of Drash: Northwest Mosaic, Wendy Marcus mused she was happy just to get it finished. “I was only thinkingContinue Reading
By Gigi Yellen, JTNews Correspondent June 18 marks the Seattle Symphony’s last performance with Gerard Schwarz conducting as music director. After 26 years, the man who has influenced not only the orchestra and its work, but also the shape of the city itself, will become “Conductor Laureate,” returning now andContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews When Music of Remembrance commissioned Betty Olivero to write a piece for this year’s spring concert, they didn’t expect one of Israel’s most respected composers to draw from her own personal history. It’s one that Seattle’s large Sephardic community can relate to. “She’s chosen toContinue Reading
Again, our Jewish calendar sets our people’s history into bold contrast. Passover’s triumphant exodus story is followed swiftly by Yom HaShoah, a day marking the Holocaust’s horrifying unchecked human cruelty. Despite some counterbalancing examples of courage and compassion, how do we tell this tale to our children? Here are someContinue Reading
A funny thing happened to Daniel Alpern as his life began to crumble following the death of his father last year. He began to talk to God and to his recently deceased dad as a way of helping him ease his troubled mind — and he got a response. “IContinue Reading
“Why did you leave me? Why can’t you come back for me?” Dilawar, a young, unemployed Kashmiri Muslim, is praying, as he does after each of his many calamities in Zero Bridge, to a godlike figure, his mother, who abandoned him, who never answers him. His voice, actually his voiceContinue Reading
The pain is physical, it’s emotional, and it’s constant as Ora and Avram hike Israel’s northernmost reaches. But it’s impossible for them — and us — to ignore the beauty of the spring, the budding flowers through verdant fields. The detail woven throughout David Grossman’s To the End of theContinue Reading
NEW YORK (JTA) — With all the restrictions, are decent desserts even possible during Passover? “My particular talent is working around restriction,” says Paula Shoyer, author of The Kosher Baker: Over 160 Dairy-free Recipes from Traditional to Trendy (Brandeis University Press, 2010). Her cookbook contains a chapter on Passover baking,Continue Reading
When the Price girls show up at their parents’ house for Passover, their mother Lilly opens the door and laments, “You’re early! You’re all early.” Hardly an expected greeting from a mother whose four daughters have taken up the pilgrimage home for one of the most important and celebrated JewishContinue Reading
