Oscar Goodman sure likes his Beefeater. So much so that this Las Vegas mayor had proposed to become a spokesman for the gin company for $100,000. The money, Goodman promised, would go to the city coffers.
Anna Krakovich\’s kind eyes and bright smile don\’t express the horror she experienced that tragic day eight years ago.
Linda Hamilton, the buff action star, is studying Yiddish-language tapes. The image is startling for anyone who remembers her as Sarah Connor, the all-American waitress-turned-warrior in James Cameron\’s \”Terminator\” flicks. It\’s even more startling when you consider that the Yiddish is for a play, Lou Shaw\’s \”Worse Than Murder: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,\” which opens tomorrow at the Ventura Court Theatre in Studio City. Hamilton plays Ethel Rosenberg, who was strapped into the electric chair in 1953 and executed, along with her husband, for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to the Soviets. Sitting on a faded gold couch in the bland rehearsal space at the Court, the petite, smoky-eyed actress says even she was surprised she accepted the part. \”I\’d sworn off heavy roles since \’Terminator 2\’ because I was just so sick of playing these very earnest, strong women,\” she says. Instead, Hamilton did some acclaimed TV movies, films such as \”Dante\’s Peak\” and a comedy or two.
That silver kiddush cup you save for special occasions? Your great-grandmother\’s seder plate? Beautiful objects with sentimental and ritual value, sure, but what kind of cash value do you have sitting on your mantels and bookshelves? With a fun takeoff of a popular PBS show, the Judaica Roadshow will answer your nagging questions. Professional appraisers specializing in Judaica will be on hand at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park-Simi Valley to offer appraisals of Judaica heirlooms, artwork and tchotchkes.
Walking into Lillian Lux\’s Lower East Side home in New York is like entering a museum of Yiddish theater.
As a kid in Queens, N.Y., Richard Milner\’s nickname was Dino, while fellow Jurassic-geek Stephen Jay Gould was Fossil Face. For Milner\’s 1954 Reform bar mitzvah, Gould gave him — what else? — Roy Chapman Andrews\’ classic, All About Dinosaurs.
Have you ever noticed yourself counting the time leading up to an important moment in your life — the years before a bar mitzvah or golden celebration, the months before a new baby is born, the weeks before a wedding or graduation or even the days before a special birthday?
A friend of mine and I were sitting at Canter\’s having lunch when we were discussing my dating life — or lack of it. Since he knows what a cool guy I am, he suggested that there was just one tactic to take — to make up an ex-wife and a divorce so that I could avoid the stigma of having never been married. He went a step better — he went for the widower concept, which I liked, and embellished with the death of my wife in a tragic car wreck. But here\’s the problem: It\’s not so much that I\’m against lying on principle, it has its place. It\’s just that I suck at it.
Any attempt to resolve the crisis in the Middle East forces us — the American people and American Jewry — to appraise the motives and the ultimate goals of the leaders involved. Endless disputes have raged over whether Yasser Arafat and the other Arab leaders merely seek a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel or whether they continue to harbor the ultimate goal of exterminating what they once derided as the \”Zionist entity.\” But just as important, perhaps even more so, is reaching an understanding of the true goals of Israel\’s current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his close associates. They — even more than their Arab opponents — hold the fate of the Israeli people in their hands.
Arab spokesmen regularly complain about what they call \”the Israeli occupation\” of the Judea-Samaria-Gaza territories. But the truth is that there is no such \”Israeli occupation.\” To begin with, nearly all Palestinian Arabs currently live under Yasser Arafat\’s rule, not Israel\’s. Following the signing of the Oslo accords, the Israelis withdrew from nearly half of the territories, including the cities where 98.5 percent of Palestinian Arabs reside. The notion that the Palestinian Arabs are living under Israeli occupation is false. The areas from which Israel has not withdrawn are virtually uninhabited, except for the two percent where Israelis reside.
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