A UCLA Hillel rabbi accused of accosting a freelance journalist in October 2003 has sent the writer a letter of apology as part of a court settlement. Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel director, was accused by Rachel Neuwirth of verbally and physically assaulting her outside Royce Hall, on the UCLA campus, during a speech by Alan Dershowitz more than four years ago.
Etzioni-Halevy has focused her attention on reworking popular biblical stories, making the characters, particularly women, more alive and personable for modern readers.
When Judea Pearl asked composer Steve Reich to create a piece of music that would commemorate the life of his son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, he knew what he did not want the music to be.
Moses made the first menorah. God commanded him to hammer out an ornate, free-standing, seven-branched candelabrum, replete with cups, knobs and flowers, from a solid piece of gold. Back then, in the desert tabernacle, and later in the First and Second Temple, the menorah fulfilled a largely inspirational and symbolic function. It was lit with the purest oil in an outside area, and it was meant to illuminate the world with the light of God and the Torah.But the menorah has changed over time.
Ohad Naharin, choreographer of Israel\’s Batsheva Dance Company credits a back injury with helping him develop a new language of dance.
What will Lemony Snicket do now? And who is Beatrice? These are the questions that are setting children abuzz — a word which here means \”something that everyone is talking and guessing about,\” — now that \”The End\” (Harper Collins), the final, 13th book of 13 chapters in Snicket\’s \”A Series of Unfortunate Events,\” hit bookstores on Oct. 13, which happened to be a Friday.
When Dallet Norris signed on to direct Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber\’s \”Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat\” for the fourth time in his career, he decided that the classic Bible tale turned classic musical needed some updating. So, for the new touring production, which opens at the Pantages Theater on June 20, he cast an \”American Idol\” finalist (Amy Adams from Season Three) as the narrator, gave the characters computers and turned hedonistic Egypt into a South-Beach style party town replete with a sun-glasses-clad Sphinx backdrop — and the brothers use cell phones to call their father, Jacob, and to deliver the news of Joseph\’s fake demise.
Biting off more than most of us can chew, husband and wife authors Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams have taken on the enormously ambitious task of tackling that age-old question: How did the world get here, and does our existence really matter? Their new book, \”The View From the Center of the Universe, Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos\” (Riverhead Books, 2006), uses cosmology — the astrophysical study of the history and structure of the universe – to meld \”Meaning\” and science to reach a greater understanding of the origins of life.
When Erica Silverman was looking for a subject for her latest children\’s nonfiction book, she decided to seek inspiration from one of the most famous Jewish writers of all time, Sholom Aleichem.
\”Truthfully, my grandfather really was the catalyst for the journey,\” Brian Bain said in a phone conversation from Dallas, where he relocated after his New Orleans home was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. He was referring to Leonard Bain, a retired traveling hat salesman and silent film editor who was 99, in 2002, when the film was made. The elder Bain has since died at the age of 101.
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