By Michael Fox, Special to JTNews An important challenge for 21st-century documentary filmmakers is connecting the distant history of the Holocaust to today, and making it relevant for younger audiences. More often than not, it’s the children and grandchildren of survivors, rescuers, and perpetrators who supply the necessary link betweenContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews ColumnistContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick , Editor, JTNews If the first 17 years of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival were its childhood, its 18th “chai” year is the time for it to spread its wings. “We sort of feel a little bit like a teenager going off to college,” said festival directorContinue Reading
By Gigi Yellen-Kohn , JTNews Correspondent What’s so Jewish about the fiddle? Okay, the violin. You do know that even classical players of this little box are known to call it a fiddle, right? Of course, the title of the Broadway show about the one on a roof has beenContinue Reading
By Charlene Kahn , JTNews Correspondent Two world-acclaimed dance companies will link Chicago to Israel to Seattle for one night this February. On Saturday, February 9 at the Paramount Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the American contemporary dance company celebrating its 35th year, will perform two works by the IsraeliContinue Reading
By Diana Brement , JTNews Columnist In the year since her book, “We are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust” (University of Nebraska), came out, Ellen Cassedy has traveled around the country to speak about the summer she spent studying Yiddish in Lithuania and what she learned about how LithuaniansContinue Reading
By Salvatore Caputo , other Sababa plays contemporary Jewish music, but it would be a mistake to think that the band’s music only touches young people, says Scott Leader, who co-founded the musical trio with Robbi Sherwin and Steve Brodsky. “We had this gig in Naples, Fla.,” he says, “andContinue Reading
By Charlene Kahn , JTNews Correspondent Up alongside the process of major scientific research and discovery is the necessity of human communication. Within that context comes miscommunication. This scenario is the subject of “Photograph 51,” opening February 1 at Seattle Repertory Theatre on the Seattle Center Campus. Written by AnnaContinue Reading
By Erin Pike, Special to JTNews “Undo,” a play about a Jewish couple’s divorce ceremony, premieres at Annex Theatre Jan. 18. Annex company member Erin Pike interviews playwright Holly Arsenault and actors Mark Waldstein and Samantha Leeds. JTNews: How would you summarize “Undo”? Holly Arsenault: “Undo” takes place in aContinue Reading
By Charlene Kahn, JTNews Correspondent Foster Hirsch loves movies with passion and enthusiasm. A professor of film, commentator, interviewer, historian, author and critic, Hirsch is at heart a lover of movies who translated that passion into a 40-year teaching career in the film department at Brooklyn College. He also givesContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, JTNews The first floor of Lauren Grossman’s Central District home is gutted and full of lab glass, molds, materials, and grotesque curiosities (sewn-up body parts, a headless rendering of Christ affixed to pipes, a gum-pink whale pocked with false teeth) produced over the courseContinue Reading
By Dikla Tuchman, JTNews Correspondent For those of us far enough removed from the generations of Jews and Germans who lived through the extraordinary horrors of the 1930s—1940s, it is nearly impossible for us to wrap our brains around Holocaust denial. It is difficult to imagine that the tragedy andContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist The 1960s and its shifting societal attitudes are a common thread in four new novels of Jewish interest. Closest to home is Issaquah author Jane Isenberg’s newest mystery-cum-historical novel, The Bones and the Book (Oconee, paper and on-demand, $14.95). Isenberg, who we just profiled asContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews ColumnistContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist More Fiction The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich (Gallery, paper, $15). America of the 1960s (see “Learning Jewish History,” page 18) was definitely a better place for Jews than Europe of the 1560s. In this novel, a young Jewish midwife leaves the Venice ghettoContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews Hey, what’s that I hear in the background? It’s nice, it’s perhaps a little worldly, it’s even got a little beat. It’s Hanukkah-like, but it also makes me feel like I’m in an airport gift shop. Which can only mean one thing: Putumayo has putContinue Reading
By Gigi Yellen-Kohn , JTNews Correspondent “Cantata for the Children of Terezìn” by Mary Ann Joyce-Walter Ravello Records, $16.99 CD. 50 minutes. Reminiscent of Mahler and Brahms, with a generous dash of shtetl melancholy, this cantata sets seven poems composed by children in the Terezìn concentration camp. The recording wasContinue Reading
By Rita Berman Frischer , Special to JTNewsContinue Reading
