The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district remain calm. And why not? They have paid $7 to attend the San Francisco Experience, a 28-minute multi-media show that promises that “you will feel the earth shake.” Utilizing a…
Stones of Remembrance installed in Vienna sidewalks
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From Canadian Jewish News, July 2013 Toronto psychologist Dr. Edna Magder was just a baby when the Nazis deported her grandmother from Vienna, but she knows it wasn’t the first time the Nazis had come to her grandmother’s door. A group of drunken Nazi soldiers had previously visited her grandmother — Theresia Hanni Brodi —…
Motherless Child: gothic romance set in world of classical music
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Book Review, Motherless Child, by Marianne Langner Zeitlin (Zephyr Press) Motherless Child, Toronto-born author Marianne Langner Zeitlin’s third novel in as many decades, is a superbly-wrought romantic page-turner that has elements in it of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, with more than a touch of the latter’s gothic essence. Set during…
Remembering screenwriter Robert Riskin
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Certainly you’ve seen of some of the movies that he wrote — the list includes Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can’t Take It With You (1938) and Meet John Doe (1941) — but you may be forgiven if you don’t…
Profile: Jerry & Naomi Goldenberg
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From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Toronto, Spring 2013 It is a busy day for Gerald and Naomi Goldenberg as they help plan some last-minute details for the upcoming wedding of one of their grandchildren. But even so, they kindly take a few minutes to sit down with me in the den of their Briar Hill…
Bone Button Borscht with Barbara Budd
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From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into a pot and add some flavourful compositions for full orchestra, rich klezmer sounds, a pinch of Hanukkah seasoning and live narration by Barbara Budd, the Toronto-based actor and co-host of the immensely popular CBC radio…
The Man Who Would Be Messiah (1999)
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From the Globe and Mail, 1999 ◊ I wrote this article for the Globe’s Ideas & Beliefs column in 1999, a mere six years after Rabbi Schneerson’s death, when the Lubavitch world seemed to be pulling apart over the issue of his messianic status and who would be his successor. Don’t know what’s happened…
Sephardic roots preserved in records of Spanish Inquisition
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Genie Milgrom, the author of My 15 Grandmothers, was one of numerous captivating speakers at the five-day International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Boston in August 2013. Although she was born into a Roman Catholic family of Spanish origin in Havana, Cuba, Milgrom felt an affinity for Judaism from a young age. She was five…
“KENNEDY SHOT” — First news hits Toronto (1963)
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Here is the front page of the Toronto Star, as delivered to my home in north Toronto on Friday November 22, 1963, with the first news of the Kennedy assassination. The editors had just enough time to strip the page of its earlier content and replace it with the huge headline plus a few sentences…
“David Levinsky:” Cahan’s classic novel of Jewish immigration
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Literary critics often express hallowed praise for writers who have contributed brilliant works to English literature but whose first language was not English. Two supreme examples come to mind. Polish-born Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) did not learn English until he was in his twenties, yet he became one of the language’s great novelists and story tellers…
