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The Next Conversation
•Can a conversation inspire a city? A people? Nextbook, an organization devoted to Jewish literature, culture and ideas (www.nextbook.org) came to L.A. last weekend, staging a full day festival at UCLA's MacGowan and Freud theaters called "Acting Jewish: Film, TV, Comedy, Music," the first of what it hopes to be… -
'Rebel with a Cause' (Andrew Stevens)
•Andrew Stevens, a longtime Beverly Hills resident, successful businessman, active philanthropist and Hungarian Holocaust survivor, is hard to resist. He's in his late 70s but looks 15 years younger -- not because of his hair, which is darker than nature permits, but because of his energy, drive and determination. He… -
Treasures of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
•Can you tell the story of a people by its music? Last November, the classical music label Naxos released the 50th CD of its American Classics series, music from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, so the time has come to give the archive its props (just imagine Randy… -
FOODIE-ISM (Barry Glassner & "The Gospel of Food")
•This time of year finds me on the treadmill in the mornings, futzing around the gym, taking walks around the neighborhood, eating lots of grilled chicken salads. I'm in training -- not for the recent Los Angeles Marathon, but for the marathon weekend in May when my wife and I… -
ASSUME EVERYONE IS JEWISH
•A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a seminar room at UCLA's Royce Hall attending a presentation by professor David Shneer of the University of Denver concerning Jewish museums in Los Angeles, a city he calls, "The Newest Jewish City in the World." As someone who has argued… -
My Punk Self
•Recently I asked a 15-year-old boy what music he listened to. His answer: "No one you ever heard of." A perfect answer. Because what every fan needs, what every person should have, is music that is his own. Over the years, there's been a lot of music that has mattered… -
Literary Paprika (Mark Sarvas and 'The Elegant Variation')
•What better way to start the New Year than by sprinkling a little literary paprika? Consider this: Mark Sarvas, a New York-born son of Hungarian parents, a voracious reader, a Francophile and a foodie, comes to Los Angeles to be a writer, sells some screenplays and starts an acclaimed literary… -
Old Jewish Jokes
•Tom Teicholz tellsJewish jokes Let us quote from sacred text: the 2005 Emmy Award acceptance speech by "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart. Spaketh Stewart: "When I first said that I wanted us to put together a late-night comedy writing team that would only be 80 percent Ivy League-educated Jews, people… -
Mamet's Question
•David Mamet has written a book, "The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred and the Jews" (Shocken/Nextbook), that is by turns bold, courageous, and outrageous -- it is a book that calls Diaspora Jews to the table and asks: "In or Out?" "The underlying premise of the book," Mamet told me recently,… -
A DIFFERENT ISRAEL
•When Israel is discussed these days, more often than not it is in terms of an existential crisis, or "the situation," or as the subject of international news headlines. However, reading recently published works by three different Israeli fiction authors, Etgar Keret, Benjamin Tammuz and A.B. Yehoshua, is a bracing… -
A Passion for War (Steve Rubin)
•To meet him, you might think Steven Rubin is a normal person. Tall, handsome, happily married with young children, he is personable, affable -- in short, one of the gentlest and nicest guys you could meet. But he is a man obsessed with war -- World War II to be…