◊ Finding the Jewish Shakespeare, The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin, by Beth Kaplan, has been newly released in paperback by Syracuse University Press, Spring 2012. One of the great moments in Yiddish theatre occurred the evening the curtain opened upon actor Jacob Adler in the role of “the Jewish King Lear,” as envisioned by…
It has been 50 years since a group of rabbis in Baltimore staged a protest against the racial segregation that was still a sad fact of life in many parts of America, including various restaurants in Baltimore. In February 1962, a time of heightened civil rights protests, the rabbis decided to target two local restaurants,…
In lieu of baseball cards, some American Orthodox boys have turned in recent decades to collecting Torah personality trading cards that feature images of revered “Gedolim” (Giants) from Moses Maimonides to Rabbi Moishe Feinstein, with lists of famous published works on the back in lieu of batting statistics. The happy invention of a Baltimore accountant,…
From the Globe and Mail, July 2000 Painted a bright red, the 201-year-old John C. Backhouse Mill seems as conspicuous against its background of grass and trees as the British Redcoats must have been when engaged in combat with the Americans during the War of 1812. A historic property that was restored to pristine condition…
Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in 1982, and remains, 30 years later, one of the most interesting family histories this reviewer has read. The reason is not so much that Burton Bernstein was the brother of a celebrity, the great composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, but because he treated…
If you have roots in Jewish Portland, you may be interested in a recent book — Stories From Jewish Portland, by Polina Olsen (The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2011). Olsen has collected many stories of the Jews of Portland. Their roots go back to the gold rush and their heart is the “old neighbourhood” of…
The 100th anniversary of the S.S. Titanic disaster is almost upon us. The legendary British ship sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912, after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 people aboard perished in the tragedy, which has been memorialized in books, popular…
When your address is Hollywood and you’d like some murals in your synagogue, who are you going to call? L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple is a magnificent structure, both inside and out. Modeled roughly after the Great Synagogue of Florence, its features seem by turns pure Byzantium and pure Hollywood. Large as a cathedral, it boasts…
During a sightseeing visit to Los Angeles some years ago, I surprised myself by taking a cab to the Margaret Herrick Library at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills. I hadn’t seen the Getty Museum, the Hollywood studios and so many other sights, so why was I going to some musty…
Rabbi Sherwin Wine of Birmingham Temple, Detroit, asserts that all of the patriarchs and prophets of ancient Israel are only myths — and so is the God of the Jewish people. Heretical utterances for a rabbi? Certainly, in any previous age. But today Rabbi Wine is the founder of a secular humanistic arm of Judaism…
