Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Eureka! Koren Tanakh best Bible commentary ever

The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel is without doubt the best Bible commentary in English. I say this after using over a hundred such books while writing my own books on the Bible, such as my many volumes on the differences between the Hebrew Bible and its Aramaic translation called Onkelos. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish History, Jewish Religion

SDSU wins plaudits for blocking anti-Semitic speaker

StandWithUs, a national organization combating anti-Semitism on American college campuses, has congratulated San Diego State University for blocking a speaking invitation to Ava Muhammad, who is a spokeswoman for Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Jewish poets reflect on their parents

Lorraine Fisher, Jan Gist, and Joel Guadarrama will be the three local writers featured at the second evening of the current series of Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices.  The free program will take place in the Astor Judaica Library, Lawrence Family JCC at 7 p.m.,  Tuesday, January 21. The first of the series, last December 17, featured poets Lucy Lehman, Adam Greenfield and Anna Abraham Gasaway. Their poetry was spellbinding. Below are samples of their talent. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, San Diego County

Poems to light the Jewish world

Poems are part and parcel of Judaism, arguably beginning with Miriam at the Red Sea, continuing with the Psalms and into present-day liturgy. Chaya Lester, Jerusalem-based psychotherapist, Jewish educator, and spiritual guide, calls on the metaphor of a lit candle and the multiple meanings of the word lit – the literature of poetry, intoxication of experiences, and “being lit up” in the sense of being alive and amazed – as her muse. The motivations for writing these poems are the twin themes of Jewish apathy and assimilation, whose panacea she perceives to be celebration, “the Jewish world needs to get lit…Jewishly lit.” [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD

Jews and chocolate: 500 years of sweetness

Sephardic Jews who were expelled in the late 15th century  from Portugal and Spain learned about cocoa and the production of chocolate from the indigenous peoples of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Keeping up contacts with non-Jewish acquaintances who had remained on Europe’s Iberian Peninsula, they helped to popularize chocolate and develop it as a product in international trade. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Travel and Food, USA

Three local poets to recite Dec. 17 at LFJCC

Adam Greenfield is a professional podcast producer and published poet. His 2017 book, Regarding the Monkey, received critical acclaim. Anna Abraham Gasaway, a graduate of Holyoke College, is currently studying poetry in the Master of Fine Arts Program at San Diego State University. Her poetry has been published in the San Diego Reader, Last Exit, Toyon, Mesa Visions and Cityworks. Lucy Lehman, a graduate of Wellesley College, has had her poetry published in the San Diego Poetry Annual. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Eileen Wingard, San Diego County

Chanukah: A time of dreams, visions

For eight nights, starting with the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev, Jews celebrate the 165 BCE victory of the Maccabees, a brave troop of priest-warriors that vanquished the mighty Syrian-Greeks. Every winter, we commemorate this military miracle by lighting the Chanukah candles, increasing the glow of spirituality in the world and saluting those who keep the dream of freedom alive. [Sam Glaser]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Sam Glaser

Activist pushes Hollywood to adopt cli-fi genre

Undeterred and full of confidence, I’ve launched the first-ever ”cli-fi movies initiative” to try to get the “cli-fi” term into the ears, eyes and minds of major Hollywood players in the 2020s. My long-term goal: to make cli-fi a genre term that everyone in Hollywood knows by the year 2030. [Dan Bloom]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Sephardic family spread over nine countries

One is reminded of the saying “to save  life is to save a world” when viewing the family tree of Sa’adi Besalel Ashkenazi a-Levi (1820-1903), who was a publisher during the 19th century in the Ottoman empire city of Salonica, known today as the Greek city of Thessaloniki.  He has over 100 descendants spread across nine countries, and that doesn’t count spouses of the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History

Dueling movies and the case against torture

“I’m not in favor of torture,” Dershowitz writes, “but if you’re going to have it, it should damn well have court approval.” His claim is that if we are, in fact, going to torture then it ought to be done in accordance with law: for tolerating torture while pronouncing it illegal is hypocritical. In other words, democratic liberalism ought to own up to its own activities, according to Dershowitz. If torture is, indeed, a reality then it should be done with accountability. There are, however, significant problems with the reasoning behind torture-warrants [Sam Ben-Meir, PhD]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Middle East, Sam Ben-Meir, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

$200m offered in match for Rady Children’s Hospital

In the past, philanthropists Ernest and Evelyn Rady donated $60 million and $120 million to Children’s Hospital, which renamed itself as Rady Children’s Hospital.  Now, the married philanthropists have offered to outdo themselves.  They promised to match $200 million in donations from other people in an effort to create a $400 million Rady Reimagine Fund to chart and implement the pediatric hospital’s growth. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Business & Finance, Donald H. Harrison, International, Middle East, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Travel and Food

Historian tells of FDR’s anti-Semitism

Vice President Henry Wallace, an eye-witness to the event, recorded in his diary that when President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill met in mid-1943, Churchill raised the “Jewish question” to which Roosevelt replied the Jews should be spread as thinly as possible all over the world, noting that he tried this method where he lived—Meriwether County, Georgia and Hyde Park, New York and his neighbors appreciated it. This anecdote encapsulates the mindset of Franklin Roosevelt. [Fred Reiss, EdD]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International, Jewish History, USA

Psuedo-scholars revive the blood libel

The latest example of this pseudo-scholarship—born out of contortions of history and fact to conform, instead, to spurious narratives—has embroiled Boston University in a debate about the academic qualifications of a prospective faculty hire, Sarah Ihmoud, a postdoctoral associate in Anthropology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. As is the current trend in the humanities and social sciences in academia, Ihmoud, in her writing about feminism and sexuality, focuses obsessively on the predations of the Jew of nations, Israel, in a torrent of so-called research. [Richard L. Cravatts, PhD]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Middle East, Richard L. Cravatts, Science, Medicine, & Education