Staff and Bylined Contributors

Violin is the Centerpiece of a Holocaust Story

Nazis pounded on the door and confiscated the treasured violin, throwing it onto a flatbed truck, breaking its string, and then putting it in storage in a cellar, where dust filled its body and extreme weather warped and cracked it.  In the years after the Nazis’ defeat, the cellar was found, and the violin located.  A luthier lovingly repaired it. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Holocaust, International, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Leonid Pasternak, Father of Boris, Wrestled with his Jewishness

Leonid Pasternak, a painter and professor at the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, a master of portraiture and book illustrations, went down in history in the shadow of his son Boris, a poet and Nobel Prize winner in literature, whom he loved and with whom he diverged in his attitude toward common ancestry. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, International, Jewish History, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Short-Story Collection Provides Tour of Human Situations and Emotions

This collection of short stories by Roberta Silman is similar to a travelogue, but instead of journeys through locales, these trips are through human emotions in given situations, especially, but not exclusively, through loss and dying. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Fiction, Staff and Bylined Contributors

50-Year-Old Takács String Quartet Performs Here with One Original Member

Of the original four student members at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, only the cellist, 75-year-old András Fejér, remains. But the uncanny melding of their instrumental voices into a unified whole continues to characterize their playing … [Eileen Wingard]

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Eileen Wingard, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Staff and Bylined Contributors

If You Haven’t Voted Already, Be Sure to Vote on Tuesday

My thoughts: people who don’t vote and complain about the outcome really have no say. If you voted, then you did the best you could. We can just hope for the best and pray it is the outcome we Jews need in Israel and in the states. Whoever you vote for, you have a voice and if you voted, it was heard. [Cailin Acosta]

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Cailin Acosta, Jewish Religion, San Diego County, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

An Israeli-American Perspective: Trump vs. Harris through Two Different Lenses

For Israelis, the U.S. presidential election isn’t just a distant spectacle – it’s a contest with stakes that feel close to home.  This year, Israelis and Americans are both watching the election with equal intensity but different perspectives on the two major candidates: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. [Shahar Masori]

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Israel, Opinion, Shahar Masori, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

City Attorney Declines to Bring Charges against 64 Anti-Israel Demonstrators Arrested at UCSD Spurring Protests from Former U.S. Rep. Lynn Schenk, Others

City Attorney Mara W. Elliott’s office has announced that “we do not intend to file criminal charges against the 64 people arrested” at the anti-Israel encampment on the UC San Diego campus last May. According to a statement, the decision was made “after a months-long review” of “substantial body-worn camera footage and all other available evidence.” [Donald H. Harrison]

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California, Donald H. Harrison, Israel, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Travel and Food, USA

Parsha Noach: Righteousness of Noach vs. Arrogance of Babelites

This week we read of two calamities, “climate change” and “immigration.” Sounds familiar and contemporary, doesn’t it? And we learn from how Noah and the builders of the Tower of Babel responded to their individual challenges, just how to prevail when dealing with misfortune, catastrophe and blows in life – real or imagined. [Michael R. Mantell]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Mantell, Staff and Bylined Contributors

‘Mufti’ Will Satisfy Neither Historians nor Graphic Arts Fans

This book is an amalgam of two genres: History and Graphic Non-Fiction. I don’t think it will satisfy devotees of either genre.  For graphic arts fans, there are too many pages filled with writing, rather than drawings.  For the serious student of history, phantasmagoric images detract from the work’s verisimilitude. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Israel, Jewish History, Middle East, Staff and Bylined Contributors

What Role in Society Should Literature Play?

When we read good literature, we should question what we read and why something is happening. We should seek to be stimulated by our reading to change and improve ourselves and everything. Is what we read proper? Should it have been done differently? [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast