Jewish History & Culture
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See Jane Shlep (Yiddish with Dick and Jane)
“See Jane shlep, Shlep, Jane shlep, Shlep, shlep, shlep.” This is not your parent’s primer. This is “Yiddish With Dick and Jane,” a new parody by Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, who will be reading their work this Sunday, Sept. 19 at the Skirball Cultural Center. The story of how Dick and Jane came to […]
Einstein in California
One hundred years ago, Einstein was a Zurich Polytechnic teaching graduate who couldn’t land a job in academe. Instead, he got a position as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland. Not the most challenging job, but it gave him time to think. Einstein liked to conduct what he called “thought experiments,” one of which asked: […]
Tough Guys (Isaac Babel)
Reading “The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel” (W. Norton & Co., 2002) in paperback, edited by Babel’s daughter, Nathalie, got me thinking about Jewish gangsters and tough guys. Babel was born in Odessa in 1894. He wrote of Odessa’s Jewish underworld and its gangsters in sparkling prose. Fifty years before Mario Puzo gave us “The […]
Rambamalama (The Rambam, Rabbi Leder and Julie Salamon)
Put down your “Da Vinci Code.” Set aside your “South Beach Diet.” Let your kaballah red string drop off your wrist. I’m here to alert you to the next pop cultural phenom: a 12th-century philosopher popularly known as the Rambam. Just a few weeks ago, I attended the “Aloud” reading series at the Los Angeles […]
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The Kid Still Stays in the Picture (Robert Evans)
Tommywood was expecting a Hollywood moment. Publicity guru extraordinaire Michael Levine had arranged for me to meet legendary Producer Robert Evans at his longtime lair, Woodland, the former home of Greta Garbo. I turned north of Sunset Boulevard and, like William Holden, wondered what I was getting myself into. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate […]
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Playing in Uketopia (Jim Beloff and the ukelele)
It’s Sunday night and a half-dozen people are onstage at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Jumpin’ Jim Beloff and his wife, Leapin’ Liz, are leading the sold-out crowd as they strum their ukuleles and sing “Farewell.” This is the climax to Uketopia, Beloff’s annual celebration of that four-stringed wonder: the ukulele. It is an […]
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