Cecil B. DeMille and the Golden Calf, a 508-page hardcover biography by Simon Louvish (Faber & Faber, 2008) covers the life and career of the legendary American film director from his birth in 1881 to his death in 1958, two years after he completed his last and most famous film, The Ten Commandments. DeMille always…
Shteyngart shines in Super Sad True Love Story
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Gary Shteyngart, the Russian-born Jewish writer who emigrated to America in 1979 at the age of seven, spoke only Russian in his parents’ home and did not lose his Russian accent until he was a teenager. His third novel, Super Sad True Love Story, from which he is scheduled to read at the International Festival…
“Why I left the Old Country”
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In 1942 the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which had only recently relocated from Vilna to New York City, sponsored a contest for the best autobiography by a Jewish immigrant on the theme, “Why I Left the Old Country and What I Have Accomplished in America.” More than 200 autobiographical essays were submitted, written mostly…
Ozick’s Foreign Bodies
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Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick’s sixth and possibly best novel, is modeled after The Ambassadors, a late novel (1903) by her idolized “Master,” Henry James, that he considered his best work. James’s novel explores what was perhaps his favourite theme: the juxtaposition of uncouth America and the more refined, cultured world of Old Europe. Ozick’s aim,…
Obit: comedian Frank Shuster (1916-2002)
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Frank Shuster, the straight man in the legendary comedy team of Wayne and Shuster, has died in Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital of pneumonia at the age of 85. He and his partner Johnny Wayne, who died in 1990, performed as a comic duo for 56 continuous years since first teaming up together for some comic…
A worthy guide to rabbinic genealogical research
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Israeli genealogist Chaim Freedman gained much expertise in rabbinic genealogy by compiling the family tree of the legendary Vilna Gaon, which was published as Eliyahu’s Branches in 1997 on the 200th anniversary of the great sage’s death. In his new treatise, Beit Rabbanan: Sources of Rabbinical Genealogy, he attempts to impart some of his knowledge to…
Ozick’s ‘Quarrel & Quandary’
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Opening Quarrel and Quandary, Cynthia Ozick’s latest collection of essays, is like removing the top from a box of quality chocolates: one doesn’t know where to begin. Despite a few mysterious squiggles and shapes, most of these bonbons have delectable fillings, as one might expect from the Jewish world’s foremost belle-lettrist. However, some of these…
Adventures of a Yiddish Lecturer
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I believe that Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Levine, Philip Roth and probably numerous other Jewish writers have penned comical reminiscences about their experiences delivering lectures on various subjects to Jewish audiences. To this list we must add the relatively unknown name of Abraham Shulman. An American essayist and former contributor to the New York Daily…
Obit: Meyer Joshua Nurenberger (1911-2001)
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Meyer Joshua Nurenberger, an internationally-known Jewish writer and publisher who founded the Canadian Jewish News, has died in Toronto at the age of 90. During a journalistic career that stretched from the 1930s into the 1990s, Mr. Nurenberger interviewed Albert Einstein, covered the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, and was editor of the Morgen Journal, a…
Obit: deputy police chief Jim Noble (1924-2003)
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Jim Noble, who rose from beat cop to deputy chief during a 37-year career on the Toronto police force, died recently in Toronto. He was 78 years old. Noble’s career was marked by an almost continuous advancement through the ranks. As a divisional detective, he worked on a gamut of crimes that included “housebreaking, frauds,…
