Here\’s a list of nicknames that friends have given various men in my life: Dead Dad Guy, Dead Sister Guy, Institutionalized Mother Man, Dead Dad Guy II, The Gambler and the ever-popular Mack Truck Collision Victim.
I had only to hear Nettie Becker\’s voice this past Tuesday to know how bad things look for Matt Fong. For Jewish Republicans such as Becker, who had traveled in June with Fong to Israel on behalf of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), her party\’s U.S. senatorial candidate had been a dream come true.
The question in regard to Lillian Hellman is not so much, What is her place in the American theater? Rather, it\’s, Is she even entitled to one?
For the first time in several elections, there are no state propositions on the November ballot that are clearly rousing Jewish communal organizations. Yet, at an open forum last week at Stephen S. Wise Temple, close to 200 people showed up to listen to experts discuss the initiatives.
When Julian Diamond was a boy, seltzer water was the traditional dinner drink at his family\’s table. The bubbly stuff came in old-fashioned glass bottles (called siphons), complete with chrome-plated pewter nozzle tops, inner glass tubes and decorative labels with distributors\’ names etched into the glass.
The mud being slung in the San Fernando Valley\’s most closely watched congressional race has a distinctive blue-and-white tinge. Their positions on issues from abortion to Social Security having failed to ignite much interest, the candidates for the 24th District seat have instead turned to scuffling over Israel.
\”Binyamin Netanyahu is no longer the leader of the national camp,\” Aharon Domb, general secretary of the West Bank and Gaza Jewish settlers\’ council, said this week, with all the finality of a judge pronouncing sentence.
Tony Kaye\’s \”American History X\” was supposed to establish him as \”the greatest living filmmaker,\” he told The Jewish Journal. Instead, the movie, a drama about the redemption of a neo-Nazi (Edward Norton), was \”raped\” by New Line Cinema; by \”narcissistic, dilettante\” Norton, who destroyed \”X\” in the editing room; and by the Directors Guild, which refused to allow Kaye his pseudonym-of-choice in the credits, Humpty Dumpty.
A story is recorded in the inspiring biography about the late Jerusalem rabbi Aryeh Levin, \”A Tzaddik in Our Times.\” One of the rabbi\’s students was about to be married when he came to Reb Aryeh and asked: \”How should I behave toward my wife? How should I treat her?\” Reb Aryeh looked at him in wonder and said: \”How can you ask a question like that? A wife is like your own self. You treat her as you treat yourself.\”
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