Changing Lives, Making Peace
Changing Lives, Making Peace.
The rabbis-in-training were making the rounds at UCLA Medical Center. They stopped at bedsides to chat with patients, to inquire about their needs, to offer prayer and consolation. Then, unexpectedly, the sight of wires, tubes and surgical dressings took its toll. One student rabbi fainted.
Makers of short films routinely encounter the difficulty of getting their movies seen by an audience greater than their parents, cast and crew. But the makers of \”Visas and Virtues\”have had better luck than most.
Rachel Rosenthal, her bald pate gleaming withsweat and her stark features grooved like gashes in alabaster, lookslike a female Erich von Stroheim — who, let\’s face it, could himselfhave been a woman in drag. Short, stubby, Teutonic, and with the kindof wracked expression one imagines Rimbaud wore after his season inhell, she could just as easily be the commandant of a Nazi death campas the most senior and compelling Performance Artist inCalifornia.
The list of films for which Elmer Bernstein has written orchestral scores reads like a roll call of cinema\’s all-time classics: \”The Ten Commandments,\” \”The Age of Innocence,\” \”The Magnificent Seven,\” \”Ghostbusters,\” \”To Kill A Mockingbird,\” \”CapeFear,\” \”True Grit,\” \”Animal House,\” \”The Great Escape,\” \”My Left Foot\”…just to name a few.
Last month,the Association of Jewish Libraries announced the winners of its Sydney Taylor Award for this year\’s most distinguished contributions to Jewish children\’s literature.\n
\”I\’m a Jewish girl, and my husband\’s a Catholic,\”says Barbara Lazaroff, who has been married for 15 years to renownedchef Wolfgang Puck.\n\nAbout 12 years ago, Passover was a lonesome timefor Lazaroff, most of whose Jewish relatives lived out of town. SoSpago regulars nudged her to create a restaurant seder, and she consulted withhubby Wolf (\”He said, \’We can make shrimp.\’ I said, \’I don\’t thinkso,\’\” Lazaroff quips).\n\nThe result was the first seder ever held in anupscale Los Angeles eatery, with kosher-style (i.e., not strictlykosher) fare a la Puck\’s trendy-interpretive cuisine.
My Passover seder was once again acclaimed by one and all as the best ever. Good thing, too, since, as befits a holiday filled with questions, anxiety had dogged my every step — right until the last moment.




