Jewish History & Culture
171 posts found
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The pariah loophole
The following opinion article appeared yesterday on the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times:John Demjanjuk's last appeal to avoid deportation was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. The 88-year-old accused Nazi concentration camp guard was stripped of his citizenship and ordered sent to Ukraine, his birthplace; Poland, the locus of the crimes; or Germany, the heir to the Nazi regime under which he served. Yet, as it now stands, he is still in the United States.… -
Sandler and the Zohan
As everyone knows by now, Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess With the Zohan" dives in where few comedies have gone before: The Middle East conflict between Arabs and Jews. Hollywood has a long tradition of preferring onscreen Jews to be Semitic-lite (or even better, portrayed by non-Jews such as Gregory Peck in "Gentleman's Agreement"). Sandler, however, pulls no such punches in "Zohan" -- Israel is Israel and Zohan's nemesis is a Palestinian terrorist -- there is no attempt to create… -
Post-Zionism in a diaspora world
What does it mean to be a Jew in a Post-Zionist world? For centuries, for Jews, the notion of living free in Zion was a dream. In Theodor Herzl's famous essay, "The Jewish State," the journalist and playwright transformed the dream of living in a Jewish state into a goal. "Next year in Jerusalem," the words we say at the end of every seder, was in those days a true aspiration for nationhood. Today, it is often treated as the… -
William Shatner gets a place at the Seder
William Shatner is God. And Pharaoh. And Moses, too. Just in time for Passover, the Jewish Music Group (a division of Shout Factory) has released "Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts," performed by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. It is conducted by David Itkin, who created and composed the Oratorio, sung by baritone Paul Rowe and includes dramatic readings from the Bible and from the haggadah, spoken by none other than Shatner. "It's perfect seder entertainment," Shatner said recently, but more… -
The Great Wall of Bernstein
Over the course of a year, I collect books I should read and books I want to read, but -- should have/would have/could have -- many I never get around to reading. Over the last few months, as last year came to a close and this new one began, and as a side benefit of watching less TV during the strike, I decided to tackle a stack of them. As is often the case, the books I read could be… -
KCRW gives us 'The Business'
In an underground office on the campus of Santa Monica College, Claude Brodesser-Akner is working with his producer, Matt Holzman, and associate producer, Darby Maloney, to describe the current status of the Oscar broadcast -- and work in a pun. Finally, Brodesser-Akner says, with some satisfaction, "The Oscars are mired." Welcome to the world of "The Business," a half-hour syndicated radio program devoted to the nuts and bolts of the entertainment industry (pun intended), hosted by Brodesser-Akner each week since… -
Let Us Travel To Iran
This fall, I am asking you to travel to Iran. Not the present-day, front-page, headline-grabbing, nuclear-developing, Holocaust-denying, Israel-hating Iran, but the Iran of just 20 or 30 years ago, as described in two newly published novels, Gina Nahai's "Caspian Rain" (MacAdam Cage) and Dalia Sofer's "The Septembers of Shiraz" (Ecco). Although Nahai's novel takes place over the decade leading up to the 1979 Iranian revolution and Sofer's in the years immediately following it, both are beautifully written, absorbing and moving… -
Big Fun Under the Big Top
with additional reporting by Natasha Teicholz When I heard that the circus was coming to town, I couldn't wait to take my daughter. I'm talking about the Greatest Show on Earth, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, appearing in Orange County until Aug. 5. I know that Cirque du Soleil has its fans -- but I find it too frou-frou, self-consciously artistic and pretentious, which may seem strange given all my own pretensions and affectations, but I can never… -
Conversations with David Mamet and Nathan Englander
Conversations with David Mamet and Nathan Englander: DAVID MAMET As part of the Nextbook Festival of ideas, held at UCLA on April 22nd, I interviewed Pulitzer prize winning playwright, screenwriter, novelist and essayist David Mamet. Nextbook had chosen the title of "Make Believe Jews" for our conversation and I took that to mean a conversation about Jews in Hollywood, on screen and off, as the topic related to Mamet's own formation and experiences as a writer, a movie lover, and… -
Conversation with Nathan Englander
NATHAN ENGLANDER About a month later, on May 21, 2007, I found myself on the stage of the Mark Taper auditorium at the Los Angeles Central Public Library, as part of the ALOUD series, in conversation with Nathan Englander whose new novel, "The Ministry of Special Cases" (Knopf) had recently been published. Englander is also the author of a collection of short stories "For The Relief of Unbearable Urges" published in 1999 to great acclaim. To watch, click on the… -
Bruce Teicholz, my father, always said he wasn't a hero.
To see the article as featured in the Jewish Journal, click on: For the cover: http://tommywood.com/cover.pdf For the article, with photos http://tommywood.com/JJcoverarticle.pdf He left his mark fighting in the Shoah, spearheading postwar relief efforts, aiding migration to Palestine - and on me My father always said he wasn't a hero. "All the heroes are dead," he used to say. He said he just did what he had to under the circumstances. My father was born in Rzeszow, Poland, as Benzion… -
The Salonistas of LA
Great ideas and great literature are being championed, promoted and supported in Los Angeles, in public and private forums, in private homes and public spaces, through the age-old medium of conversation. Several years ago, the Jewish Museum in New York mounted an exhibition called "The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons." Focusing on women such as Henriette Herz in 1780s Berlin, Genevieve Straus in 1890s Paris and Salka Viertel in 1930s Santa Monica, the exhibition demonstrated the critical…