\”Drop and give me 50!\”
It\’s 8 a.m. Monday; red lights are blaring, and R&B is booming. I\’m sweating on the treadmill in a small studio in West Hollywood, along with 24 other people who are hoping Barry Jay will whip them into shape at Barry\’s Bootcamp — the hippest, hardest fitness class I\’ve ever encountered.
\nThe all-new, completely updated \”Joys of Yiddish\” (Crown, 2001) by Leo Rosten will be released soon, and thumbing through an advance copy yesterday I couldn\’t stop smiling at the language\’s ability to capture an action, an emotion and a worldview — all in one word.
We were together in a small room, about 10 of us. Four of us were from Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. I stood with Jimmy Delshad, our temple\’s past president; his wife, Lonnie, and Temple Treasurer Kam Hekmat, as well as two members of an L.A. fact-finding mission, David Rubin and Dr. Mark Barak. We were bending over the scroll of a Torah, along with five rabbis, all dressed in combat fatigues. Each rabbi was scrutinizing it with an erudite eye.
On Jan. 12, 1995, Valerie Sobel\’s 19-year-old son, Andre, died of a brain tumor. Exactly one year later, her husband shot himself. His suicide note stated that he did not wish to live past his son\’s tombstone unveiling. Three months later, Sobel\’s mother died of a stroke.
\”The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation\” by David R. Slavitt (Johns Hopkins University Press. $15.95).
David R. Slavitt\’s new translation of Eicha (Lamentations) demonstrates his masterful sensibilities and poetic fortitude. Avoiding the abstract and distant language typical of academic poetry, Slavitt\’s poetry and translations are accessible to the common reader, but written without compromise.
Tisha B\’Av, the fast day commemorating the destructions of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem 2,500 and 2,000 years ago, respectively, doesn\’t rank up there with most celebrated Jewish holidays.
Alexander Deutsch secretly painted watercolors in an Argentinian political prison after he was kidnapped, tortured and incarcerated by the paramilitary regime in the late 1970s.
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