Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is a freelance journalist based in Mevasseret Zion, Israel.

Her published works, available on Amazon, include:

German arts on exhibit in 50th year of Israel relations

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson JERUSALEM — To mark both the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Israel Museum and fifty years of German-Israeli diplomatic relations, the  Museum is currently presenting an exhibition of masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The exhibition, entitled ‘Twilight over Berlin’ and showing works from the period between 1905 and 1945, provides […]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

’45 Years’ seemed to take that long for concert lover

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Because both my husband and I tend to prefer going to a concert of an evening rather than attending the screening of a movie, our visits to the cinema are relatively few and far between. Due to a shortage of concerts we have, however, been to see a couple

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

SDJW thanks 43 whose works appeared in January

SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — San Diego Jewish World expresses its appreciation to the 43 writers and photographers whose works appeared during January 2016.  These individuals included: David Amos Eitan Arom Kenneth Bandler Laurie Baron Amber Bartlett Ronnie Blair Dan Bloom Shoshana Bryen Stephen Bryen Cynthia Citron Richard L. Cravatts Judy Friedel Michael Freund Donald H. Harrison Natasha

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Barry Shaw, Cynthia Citron, Donald H. Harrison, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Eileen Wingard, Eva Trieger, Fred Reiss, EdD, Ira Sharkansky, Lawrence Baron, Mark D. Zimmerman, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Mimi Pollack, Natasha Josefowitz, Sheryl Rowling, Shoshana Bryen, Steve Kramer

Book of the Dead, Yom Kippur and Verdi’s Requiem

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — I know I’ve written before about Verdi’s Requiem, the role it played in my childhood and musical education in general, about the impression made on me when I read of its performance by prisoners in Theresienstadt and finally being privileged to attend a performance of the reconstruction of

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish Religion, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

The Paris massacre as seen from Israel

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson JERUSALEM — So now ‘radical Islamist’ terror has spread to Paris, the center of culture, civilization and enlightenment. Last January Paris was subjected to a similar heinous attack, but that was confined to targets that could be – and were – dismissed or defined as ‘appropriate,’ i.e., the offices of a satirical magazine

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Middle East

SDJW thanks its December 2015 writers

San Diego Jewish World thanks and acknowledges the wonderful contributions of the following writers whose works appeared on our pages in December, 2015: Stephen Baird Kenneth Bandler Laurie Baron Michal Beruven Dan Bloom Shoshana Bryen Richard L. Cravatts Jonathan Greenblatt Toby Klein Greenwald Ryan M. Greiss Donald H. Harrison Natasha Josefowitz Rabbi Ben Kamin Morton

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Barry Shaw, Donald H. Harrison, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Eileen Wingard, Eric George Tauber, Eva Trieger, Ira Sharkansky, Lawrence Baron, Mark D. Zimmerman, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Mimi Pollack, Natasha Josefowitz, San Diego County, Sheryl Rowling, Shoshana Bryen, Steve Kramer

Israel: Where going to the Dead makes you feel so alive

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel –After some difficult weeks in which my other half was obliged to attend to structural damage to property of ours caused by an incompetent contractor working for a neighbor, I managed to persuade him to book us a weekend in a hotel by the Dead Sea, so that I could

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East, Travel and Food

Book tells how ‘Call the Midwife’ became a TV series

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson  MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — The TV series, Call the Midwife, which is based on Jennifer Worth’s book of that name about her own experiences of working as a midwife in the impoverished East End of post-war London, has aroused widespread interest and enthusiasm, first in Britain and subsequently all over the world.

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Yeol Eum Son wows Jerusalem audience

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson JERUSALEM — Set apart from the usual concerts in the framework of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra’s subscription series was one entitled ‘First Prize,’ and dedicated to young musicians ‘from east and west’ who had succeeded in various international competitions. So we bought tickets for a concert with Yeol Eum Son, a young pianist

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Arab merchants most hurt by continuing violence

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — It always looks worse from the outside than the actual situation on the ground. Of course, wherever and whenever violent attacks occur there is mayhem, often with tragic consequences, but life in Israel goes on pretty much as normal everywhere else, though there is a noticeably greater police

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

SDJW thanks its November writers

SAN DIEGO — San Diego Jewish World thanks and would like to acknowledge those writers whose works appeared on this news publication during the month of November.  They were: David Amos Kenneth Bandler Laurie Baron Jeremy Ben-Ami Dan Bloom Shoshana Bryen Stephen Bryen Dane Chapin Tamara Isaacs Ciocci Cynthia Citron Richard L. Cravatts Steve Diamond Joe

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Barry Shaw, Cynthia Citron, Donald H. Harrison, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Eileen Wingard, Eric George Tauber, Fred Reiss, EdD, Ira Sharkansky, Lawrence Baron, Lloyd Levy, Mark D. Zimmerman, Melanie Rubin, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Natasha Josefowitz, San Diego County, Sheryl Rowling, Shoshana Bryen, Steve Kramer

Never Again: Holocaust news for November 23, 2015

A history of early Nazi Germany worth reading In the Garden of Beasts; Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson; Broadway Books, New York, 2011 By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — The Garden of Beasts in the title refers to the inhabitants of Berlin’s Tiergarten, the park in central Berlin that once served

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish History