Arts and Culture

AMSTERDAM (JTA) – More than 350 years after this city’s Portuguese Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and banned his writings for eternity, the philosopher’s books are for sale at the souvenir shop of the community’s synagogue. Spinoza, a Dutch-born Jewish philosopher who laid the intellectual foundations of the Enlightenment… Read more »

(The Nosher via JTA) — Cooking enough for an army has been a long-established tradition of Jewish mothers across the globe, but mine takes it to a new level. I can’t think of a meal prepared by my mother where there wasn’t enough food for each diner to have… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The teeming blocks around this city’s New Central Bus Station are anything but scenic. Packed with humanity at every hour of the day, they are dizzying monuments to urban blight: equal parts graffiti, chaotic traffic and bustling, black-market commerce. So on a sunny Friday last… Read more »

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — With the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay employees lifted this summer, it’s a good time to be pitching scouting to the liberal American Jewish streams. So says Bruce Chudacoff, the chair of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting. A representative… Read more »

(The Nosher via JTA) — Growing up, my mom always made the best latkes. And while I know everyone probably says this about their mom, I maintain her latkes really were the best. She would stand over the sink shredding and shredding potatoes until night’s end. Then she would insist… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Ever since Zero Mostel imagined himself as a rich man in the original 1964 Broadway production, “Fiddler on the Roof” has been a cultural landmark on Broadway and in the Jewish sphere. It’s one of those musicals that always seems to be in rotation. Over… Read more »

(JTA) — Writer and director Jill Soloway grew up in what she calls a “somewhat normalish, upper middle class Jewish household” in Chicago. Her mom was a public relations consultant (she worked for Mayor Jane Byrne) and her dad a psychiatrist. But she always sensed that “something was a… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Neal Shusterman helped his son Brendan with a second-grade report on the Pacific Ocean’s Marianas Trench, he thought the name of its deepest location, Challenger Deep, would make a great title for a book. In fact, for a number of years, whenever Shusterman — the author… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Hamilton Jordan, President Jimmy Carter’s wunderkind adviser and chief of staff, discovered at age 20 that his family’s story wasn’t a straightforward Christian Southern experience. At the cemetery service for his maternal grandmother, Helen, Jordan was puzzled to discover her plot was nestled alongside that of… Read more »

(JTA) — I first tasted latkes for brunch at a trendy eatery on the Lower East  Side about six years ago. Since then, I’ve seen them across the country on brunch menus everywhere from diners to Michelin Star restaurants. Latkes — or potato pancakes, as they’re known to non-Jews —… Read more »

GLASGOW, Scotland (JTA) — Once the music started playing — not the “Hava Nagila” tune that made her the Jewish poster child of the London Games, but something equally folksy — Aly Raisman tumbled right out of bounds. On her first bit of gymnastics at her comeback World Championships here… Read more »

(JTA) — Admittedly, “The Man in the High Castle,” the new original series from Amazon Prime, is in a tough spot. Many TV fans are wondering if the much-hyped drama can live up to the standard set by its Emmy-award winning Amazon predecessor, “Transparent.” “High Castle” is based on — but… Read more »

Beverly King Pollock

The Invisible Theatre will hold a reading of “Looking for Magic,” a semi-autobiographical play by Tucsonan Beverly King Pollock, on Tuesday, Dec. 1 at 8 p.m. in observance of World AIDS Day. Pollock and her husband, Mel, lost both of their sons to AIDS in the 1990s. In 1990,… Read more »

(Jewniverse via JTA) — When you think of Mark Twain, chances are white fences and the Mississippi River spring to mind a long time before anything Jewish does. But the man lauded both as “the greatest American humorist of his age” and “the father of American literature” had a Jewish son-in-law who… Read more »

(The Nosher via JTA) — Thanksgiving was a sacred holiday in my family growing up. There were a series of rituals, smells, sounds and foods we knew we could expect each and every year without fail. The Macy’s Day Parade on TV in the background. Pillsbury biscuits with lots of butter. Stuffed… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Irina Nevzlin didn’t know she was Jewish until she was 7, and even then she wasn’t quite sure. So it’s pretty remarkable that the Moscow native — who grew up in Soviet Russia under the dual shields of privilege and protection — is now the… Read more »

Beth Greenberg

Beth Greenberg is the new director of opera at the University of Arizona. She joined the faculty of the UA’s Fred Fox School of Music this fall after serving as a resident stage director at the New York City Opera for more than 20 years. Under Greenberg’s direction, the… Read more »

Lauren Grossman

Tucson author Lauren B. Grossman found the inspiration for her second novel, “The Golden Peacock,” in a souvenir from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. When visiting the museum about a decade ago, Grossman was handed the identity card of a Holocaust survivor, randomly selected from a bin. She… Read more »

(JTA) — Really, every season is book season — but autumn brings a blend of offerings just right for warming up with as the weather cools down. To help you select the best one(s) to keep you cozy on the couch, or to find that perfect Hanukkah present for… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (Tazpit) – Bandura Games, a computer gaming company based in San Francisco, California, is set to launch a new mobile game app that would bridge gaps, build connections and create empathy between people from different sides of conflict zones. Initially interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Justin Hefter,… Read more »