Books, Poetry & Short Stories

China’s jailed Nobel laureate is granted parole after terminal cancer diagnosis

BEIJING — Chinese authorities released detained dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo on medical parole after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, his lawyer said Monday. Liu, 61, is receiving treatment at a hospital in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, according to his lawyer Mo Shaoping. The Norway-based Nobel committee awarded Liu, a […]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International

The personal peril of being a translator

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — One doesn’t normally think of translating and editing as a dangerous profession, but my experience of working in this field for the last fifty years has had a deleterious effect on me, leaving me seriously incapacitated. Reading literature of any kind, and especially if it has been translated

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Emily Robbins turns her experience living in Syria into a stunning first novel on love, loss and language

Getting Emily Robbins on the phone is not an easy task. The writer and anthropology scholar is currently living in Jordan, researching her second book. Her first book, “A Word for Love,” is set in Syria. She was inspired to write it after living in the country for multiple years in the early 2000s. Robbins’

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Middle East

Rabbi Sacks essays on the Book of Numbers

Covenant & Conversation, Numbers: The Wilderness Years, A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Maggid Books and The Orthodox Union, Jerusalem, © 2017, ISBN 978-1-68025-294-1, p. 171, plus glossary, $14.95 By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California –  World-renown rabbi and scholar Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begins with the assertion that the Book of

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion

Stephen King more profound as author than coach

On Writing by Stephen King; Scribner, Simon and Schuster, 2000 By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Not being a fan of the horror/fantasy genre of novels, I must confess at the outset that I have not read any of Stephen King’s other books. I do know, however, that he is a very successful and prolific author in

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

The debate about Bob Dylan’s faith is over

Nearly 40 years after Bob Dylan stunned the music world with the release of his overtly Christian album, “Slow Train Coming,” followed quickly with the unambiguously gospel “Saved,” people still don’t know what to make of America’s most enigmatic troubadour. The conventional wisdom is that Dylan took an intense dive into evangelical Christianity for a

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

Freud biography heavy reading, yet interesting

Freud: An Intellectual Biography by Joel Whitebook; Cambridge University Press (c) 2017; 496 pages. By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — When Don Harrison asked if I’d review a new book about Schlomo Sigismund Freud, known to most as Sigmund Freud, I gladly accepted the opportunity. Why? I’m not sure. Not that I’d spend

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Michael Mantell, Science, Medicine, & Education

Was the whale created by Jonah’s subconscious mind?

Unusual Bible Interpretations: Jonah and Amos, by Rabbi Israel Drazin; Gefen Publishing House, 2016; ISBN-10: 9652298859; ISBN-13: 978-9652298850 By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel CHULA VISTA, California — I would like to begin this book review with a conversation I had with the publisher of San Diego Jewish World, Don Harrison. He asked me whether there was

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Future historians may rue aspects of U.S. war on terror

By Ken Stone Times of San Diego LA JOLLA, California — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Lichtblau, author of an exposé of the Nazi era’s shameful American aftermath, is worried what a future historian might say about today’s War on Terror. With James Risen, Eric Lichtblau won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for revealing

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Ken Stone, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Sex with the powerful: A story of a D.C. intern

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin; Algonquin Books of Chapel Hills; (c) 2017; ISBN pending; 307 pages; tentative price $26.95. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — Two young Jewish interns, Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy, z”l, as written about in the Washington D.C. media became caricatures of themselves. Lewinsky was the intern whose spotted

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison