Jewish History & Culture

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Picturing LA (Julius Shulman)

Julius Shulman, the still much-in-demand architectural photographer, famous for his photos of Modernist homes, turned 97 a few weeks ago, and the partying has been pretty much nonstop — which is the way Shulman likes it. […]

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Michael Chabon's Amazing (Jewish) Adventures

On the occasion of the first annual “Celebration of Jewish Books” at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, the Jewish Journal asked me to engage Michael Chabon in a (brief) conversation about the Jewish flavor of his work. Herewith the results: Novelist Michael Chabon has an agent, Steven Barclay, who handles his speaking engagements […]

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Rivers of Music

Producer, songwriter and musician Larry Klein is having a good year. In a way, one could say his current success is the culmination of a process of recontextualizing his background, his experience, his talents and his interests. Two records he produced have just been released on Verve Records: “River: The Joni Letters” by jazz great […]

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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 […]

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Summer and the start of school

In one of his most famous works, the French poet Francois Villon asked: “Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan? (But where are the snows of yesteryear?).” I might ask the same about where this summer went. It seems like just last week my daughter was getting out of class, and now she’s about to start […]

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Zsa Zsa Gabor: The Last of the Hungarian Mohicans

“I want a man with kindness and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?” — Zsa Zsa Gabor Lately, I have been thinking about Zsa Zsa, and it makes me sad. A few years ago, she crashed her car on Sunset, and she has been wheelchair-bound since. She had been a recluse […]

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