By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent This season, we witness a musical event unprecedented in the history of Jewish life and the recording arts. The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music has released the first of 50 planned CDs representing composers, performers, periods and genres, crossing the spectrum of both religiousContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent Since 1980, the spunky media psychologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, has been combining her sensitive mix of the maternal and the moral with her flair for articulating sexually explicit information. “Dr. Ruth,” as she is known to her millions of fans around the world, pioneered psychosexualContinue Reading

By Diana Brement, JTNews Correspondent It’s fortunate that Classic-KING-FM’s new program director, Bob Goldfarb, has been a frequent visitor to Seattle, otherwise he might have been put off by the storms that blasted through western Washington last month. “It’s funny,” he said on the phone from his office, “when IContinue Reading

By Diana Brement, JTNews CorrespondentContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent Wayne Kaplan can see individual atoms. The associate professor in Haifa’s Technion University doesn’t have superpowers, however. What he does have is a microscope in his lab with high enough resolution to see those atoms, which allows him to research “the way atoms are arrangedContinue Reading

By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent Ariel Sharon wants a peace treaty for the sake of posterity. Dean will lose to Bush in 2004. Noah Webster was surprised by his wife. New York Times columnist William Safire offered these insights and predictions to about 350 close friends of the Jewish FederationContinue Reading

By Deborah Ashin , JTNews Correspondent Whether it’s seeking a way to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians or helping mothers understand how to connect with their babies, Yaffa Maritz believes people can find solutions if they will just listen to each other and reflect on their own values. TheContinue Reading

By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent Attorney General John Ashcroft has called it “baseless hysteria and simply ridiculous.” Despite his public remarks in September, booksellers and librarians across the country continue to question the constitutionality of the expanded powers granted to law enforcement in the USA PATRIOT Act. The American BooksellersContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent For those families that give gifts on Hanukkah, eight nights of holiday can be both a good and a bad thing. While there is always the chance for a potential gold mine all eight nights, the reality is far more sad. While I don’t rememberContinue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent Lee Gutkind, editor and founder of the journal Creative Nonfiction, will visit Seattle this December to discuss his new memoir Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather, a book that reconnected him to the Jewish culture he was raised in on the East Coast. “It wasContinue Reading

By Thomas “Toivy” Blatt, Special to JTNews On October 14, a small group of Holocaust survivors celebrated the 60th anniversary of an unusual episode of the Second World War. Until the mid-1980s, this event was nearly forgotten by all but those directly involved, and it remains little known today. ItsContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent Mercer Island’s Congregation Herzl-Ner Tamid buzzed with excitement on Nov. 16 as crowds flocked in to see the art and Judaica many Israeli artists came to town to sell. The event, Shop Israel in Seattle, attracted approximately 2,500 people from around the community, according toContinue Reading

By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent Meira Shupak believes strongly in building bridges within Seattle’s Jewish community. “Sometimes there are things very specific to Orthodox lifestyle that are not easily understood,” she said. “It’s hard not to have your own judgment about something, if you’re secular, from the outside.” That isContinue Reading

By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent The window for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians is quickly closing. That, and a bit of hearty optimism for some kind of resolution to the intifada that has gripped the Middle East were what approximately 700 left-leaning individuals came away with from B’ritContinue Reading

By Joshua Rosenstein, Special to JTNews Bella Israel was born in Istanbul. The Seattle resident, who attends Temple De Hirsch Sinai, immigrated to the United States 45 years ago while many of her relatives remained in Turkey. Her nephew was wounded in one of the Turkey synagogue attacks on Nov.Continue Reading

By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent As a businessman by day and an internationally renowned tenor soloist by night, Melvyn Poll is a busy man. Poll was born in Seattle into a musical family, and has been singing virtually all of his life. His mother was a violinist and soprano andContinue Reading

By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent Klezmer Concertos and Encores David Krakauer, clarinet; Scott Goff, flute; Alberto Mizrachi, tenor; other soloists; Barcelona Symphony; Berlin Radio Symphony; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; www.milkenarchive.org or www.naxos.com. Like Bartok in Hungary, Dvorak in Bohemia, and Tchaikovsky in Russia, the composers on this disc haveContinue Reading

By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent As this paper goes to press, Seattle Symphony music director Gerard Schwarz has just returned from his biggest Jewish conducting assignment ever. As part of a weeklong New York conference, “Only in America: Jewish Music in a Land of Freedom,” Schwarz joined an impressive arrayContinue Reading

By Sharon Finegold, Special to JTNews Asia: my maiden name. There it was, March 2001, on a sidewalk sign adjacent to my hotel in Jerusalem. Asia: usually found as a prefix to “laundry,” bean sprouts, or “imports.” But here in Jerusalem it invited me into “Asia Gallery: the Private CollectionContinue Reading