By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent Like many other day camps, kids spend their days making art and music. At Seattle’s Middle East Peace Camp, however, some of the children had just arrived in the United States. Others were first-generation Arab-Americans or Palestinian-Americans. Some were Jewish. But for five summer daysContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent Iyar Dalva wrote a verse of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” in Hebrew. He then performed the entire song, his fingers strumming on his guitar, in front of the entire Camp Solomon Schechter population at its annual talent show. This Israeli teenager — and the seven othersContinue Reading

By Louis Wald , Special to JTNews Since I was a child, I had had the wish to travel to Poland with my parents, and see their native country with them firsthand. I wanted to know what their life was like, what their homes looked like, where they played asContinue Reading

By David Chesanow, JTNews Correspondent For Temple Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia, the High Holidays will be extra special this fall: after going for a year without one, Washington State’s only Reconstructionist congregation again has a full-time rabbi. Rabbi Seth Goldstein, 30, who assumed the pulpit on July 1, has beenContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent When late-night radio talk show host Erin Hart was offered the chance to visit Israel, she jumped at the chance. “I’ve always wanted to go to Israel, since I was a child,” she said. Hart, whose weekend show on KIRO-AM radio is considered to beContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent “All of my work is kind of a self-analysis — a search for my Jewishness,” says artist and Seattle native Leonard Piha. Piha grew up in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood and attended Congregation Ezra Bessaroth. Now, at age 49, he lives in Athens, Ga., aContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent This list was compiled with the help of Don Hood and Graham Shutt, booksellers and well-read intellectuals at the University Village Barnes & Noble bookstore: The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis Leon R. Kass (Free Press, $35.00) Lauded as an impressive work based on yearsContinue Reading

By Diana Brement, JTNews Correspondent It is the greatest story every told, and there’s always a new angle or twist to explore. In The Miracles of Exodus, (HarperSanFrancisco, hardcover, $24.95), British physicist Colin J. Humphreys offers scientific detective work to explain the mysteries and phenomena of the Exodus. Humphreys describesContinue Reading

By Emily Moore, JTNews Correspondent Jews love fish. They have always loved and honored the place fish has held in the culture. Many old, beloved Jewish recipes have become fixtures in the diets of the general population. Did you know that Jews were largely responsible for the advent of fishContinue Reading

By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent Film critic and talk-radio host Michael Medved joined his wife and co-author Diane for a recent pubic appearance in Bellevue. The couple, touting their most recent book, Saving Childhood, spent more than an hour talking about their contention that since the 1960s, modern American societyContinue Reading

By Louis Pasek, Special to JTNews Thirty-four teens from the Stroum Jewish Community Center will be representing Washington State in this year’s Maccabi Games. These young athletes will compete in six different sporting events: girls’ volleyball, boys’ basketball, boys’ soccer, swimming, dancing, and tennis. The boys’ basketball team (ages 15-16)Continue Reading

By Louis Pasek, Special to JTNews The talk, called “Reporting Back From Palestine,” occurred June 25 at a small gathering place near Seattle Center. Approximately 25 attendees, mostly between the ages of 30 and 55, sat in a small conference room. Various literature had been set out, including a seriesContinue Reading

By Rita Weinstein, JTNews Correspondent Congressman and presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) made several stops in Seattle July 18 and 19 to share his progressive message. The Jewish Transcript spoke with him as he toured Tent City when it was housed in the parking lot of Temple Beth Am. Transcript:Continue Reading

By Naomi Pfefferman, other LOS ANGELES — “I’m a ‘Marx Brothers anarchist,’” filmmaker Jordan Susman said. “It’s the sense of having a flower squirt water into the eyes of authority.” The tone pervades his debut feature, The Anarchist Cookbook, which revolves around a “latter-day Marx brother,” Susman said. Puck GoldContinue Reading

By Victor Wishna, Special to JTNews Most Bar Mitzvah boys have to settle for fountain pens and savings bonds. When Adam Levy became a man at 13, however, he walked away with a new Gibson ES-335, still considered one of the finest electric guitars ever made. Twenty-three years later, theContinue Reading