Sixteen members of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra will perform the work of Leo Smit, a Dutch Jewish composer killed in the Holocaust, at the community’s annual Holocaust commemoration, “A Grave in the Air: A Musical Remembrance,” on Sunday, April 22. Smit, who was of Portuguese descent, was born in Amsterdam in 1900. He spent the [...]
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Sonia Reich is a Holocaust survivor who, as a child, hid from the Nazis in the forests of Poland and witnessed the murder of family members. Sixty years later, she’s transferred the horrors of her past to the present, experiencing late-onset post- traumatic stress disorder, which manifests in paranoid delusions and hallucinations. Reich’s son, Howard [...]
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In the last few decades, German and French filmmakers — reflecting and, in some cases, bravely advancing national attitudes — have examined the Holocaust with both blunt candidness and shades-of-gray maturity. Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s profoundly responsible and beautifully made “In Darkness” represents a rare cinematic attempt to address the Poles’ unhappy participation in World [...]
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Born Marcus Rothkovich in Dvinsk, Russia (now Latvia) in 1903, Mark Rothko was an artist who created larger-than-life canvases until his death by suicide in 1970. “Red,” John Logan’s play about Rothko, which garnered six Tony Awards in 2010, is currently onstage at the Seattle Repertory Company in a shared production coming to Tucson’s Arizona [...]
Read More »LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — Jason Segel folded his 6-foot-4-inch frame compactly onto a couch at the Four Seasons Hotel and placed his hand upon his chin. Quirky and thoughtful in conversation, the star and co-writer of such comic hits as “The Muppets” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” spoke eloquently on topics ranging from the works [...]
Read More »Geneva – Dr. Raz Somech is one of the main figures in the deeply moving documentary “Precious Life,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 and serves as a powerful image of hope in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2008, a four month-old baby from Gaza, Mohammed Abu Mustafa, came to the paediatric unit [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — The novelist Jonathan Safran Foer grew up with a fairly typical American Passover. His father would use the Maxwell House Haggadah, supplemented with his own pamphlet of writings, and lead the annual Foer Seder. But nine years ago, sitting at his family Seder in Washington, D.C., Foer thought that [...]
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The Phoenix-based Arizona Jewish Theatre Company will present “The Blessing of a Broken Heart,” based on the award- winning book by Sherri Mandel, from March 22 to April 1. Adapted by Todd Salovey, the play depicts a young American mother who moves her family from suburban Maryland to Israel in search of meaning and adventure, [...]
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The Jewish community will celebrate a longtime leader later this month at “All That Jazz,” a party honoring and starring Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona for almost 18 years. “Stuart’s been so terrific,” says Donald Diamond, who initiated the event after realizing Mellan has never received public [...]
Read More »BERLIN (JTA) — A new documentary is shining light on Germany’s neo-Nazi music scene and the role it plays in cultivating a violent far-right subculture. The film “Blut muss Fliessen” (Blood Must Flow) looks at the neo-Nazi music scene in Germany, as well as in Austria, Italy and Hungary. The documentary, which takes its name [...]
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