Jewish History & Culture
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"Doc" The Life and Fictions of Harold Humes
Watching wasted genius, a life gone wrong, is compelling and poignant, but with “Doc” airing December 9, at 10PM on PBS’ Independent Lens (Check your local listings for actual times), we feel much more like guests doing a post-mortem on a private party where the drinks may have been dosed. “Doc” is a documentary by […]
Wild about Diamond
David Wild wants you to know that he is an unabashed Neil Diamond fan. So much so that he has written a book titled, “He Is … I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond” (Da Capo Press) that is less biography, according to Wild, than “tribute album.” Being a Diamond […]
Yoram Kaniuk: Israel's Interior monologuist
Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk first grabbed my attention in 2006 when he wrote a series of diary entries about life in Tel Aviv during Israel’s war with Lebanon. Kaniuk, who will be appearing at American Jewish University on Sunday as part of the second annual Celebration of Jewish Books, painted a cranky portrait of himself […]
It's SHOWTIME for this Cantor
At the dawn of Hollywood talkies, “The Jazz Singer” told the story of a young Jewish man’s conflict between a career in the entertainment industry and being a cantor. The sacred and the profane seemed two poles whose opposing magnetic draws tore the protagonist apart. But that was 1927. Today, more than 90 years later, […]
Steven Spielberg dreams anew
Over the last two weeks, lost amid Wall Street’s financial turmoil, came the announcement that Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks was leaving Paramount, having found financing from The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (“Reliance”), one of India’s largest private companies. What does the fact that no American studio or financier made a better offer say about Spielberg, […]
Defender of Faith
If the bestseller charts are any indication, it’s become popular to condemn religion. Books such as Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” and “The End of Faith,” Richard Dawson’s “The God Delusion,” Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great” and Bill Maher’s soon-to-be-released film, “Religulous,” would have us see faith as antiquated, illogical and dangerous. […]