Living Through Chemistry
Marlene Adler Marks
July 18, 2002
The ancient rabbis practiced a relatively simple form of medicine: cabbage for sustenance, beets for healing.
Category
Womans Voice
Fears After El Al
Marlene Adler Marks
July 11, 2002
We must know each other, as accurately as possible. If you can\’t invite your local imam into your living room, then go down to your local mosque, yourself, and bring a group from your synagogue with you.
Minority Report
Marlene Adler Marks
July 4, 2002
Steven Spielberg\’s new film, "Minority Report," is not exactly a deep take on the problems of "knowing," but since you\’ll probably see it anyway, here\’s where it brought me.
The film, based on a science fiction story by Philip K. Dick, argues that the future can indeed be known. Moreover, our security depends upon finding a Pinchas, a zealot who knows what crimes are being committed, and personally stops them. So anxious are we to hire this Pinchas, this future-knower, that we would sacrifice our freedoms for him.
It is 2054 in a dark, police-state Washington, D.C, all murder has been foretold by three mermaid-type creatures called precogs, so named because they have pre-cognition. The crimes are prerecorded in the future, then replayed in real time, at which point they are interrupted and prevented by a precrime squad headed by John Anderton (Tom Cruise), the very Pinchas we are seeking. Pretty neat.
Talk to Me
Marlene Adler Marks
June 27, 2002
I owe my life\’s work to Ann Landers. And, of course, her sister, Dear Abby. Dr. Rose Franzblau. And Dr. Joyce Brothers.
Insider, Outsider
Marlene Adler Marks
June 6, 2002
I check in periodically with David Tokofsky, who has represented the Eastside on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) since 1995, just to find out how long it takes to stop being considered an outsider.
For a Jewish boy on the Eastside, the answer is: more than two terms. Even now, despite winning two elections, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) has made him the target of redistricting, to insure that the next time out, someone with a Latino surname gets the job.
Talking to Gabby
Marlene Adler Marks
May 23, 2002
Gabriela Jacobo, known as Gabby, at age 17 is a rising radio star.
Thinking Ahead
Marlene Adler Marks
May 16, 2002
Even hypothetically, it\’s not so simple. How do I feel about life-sustaining technology? At what point, if ever, would food and water be a form of futile prolonging of life?
Jewish Mother Jokes
Marlene Adler Marks
May 9, 2002
Mother\’s Day is not exactly a Jewish holiday, but it does provide an occasion to consider whether anything new can be noted in that old war-horse, the Jewish mother joke. Surprisingly, I do note several new wrinkles that help explain why even now this Borscht-belt holdover is not going away fast.
In the Soup
Marlene Adler Marks
May 2, 2002
My parents visited a year ago while I recuperated from lung cancer surgery and they developed a division of labor.My father would do odd jobs around the house. My mother would feed me.
This was a good plan in theory, but in reality, it had loopholes. My father\’s tasks were well-defined: fix a fence, change a light bulb. But my mother struggled. What is it exactly her middle-aged daughter with upper-middle-class tastes liked to eat? The fact is that both of us had long since stopped cooking most of our meals, taking our nourishment from restaurants and take-out. Nevertheless, there persisted in her the belief that when a child is sick, only homemade foods will do. Familiar, nourishing, Jewish foods.
Travel Machismo
Marlene Adler Marks
April 25, 2002
As Israeli-Palestinian violence makes daily life in the Jewish state a living (as opposed to a virtual) nightmare, American Jews are raising the ante on expressions of loyalty. A rabbi recently told me he wants every Jew to travel to Israel this year. A lay leader puts his name on the list for every mission, but breathes a sigh of relief when each is quickly cancelled.
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