Alan Beals started collecting stamps as a boy. In the \’80s, when a flood of new issues from the U.S. Postal Service swamped his enthusiasm, Beals stumbled into the obscure niche of Judaic philatelists.
Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the receiving of the Torah, will be honored this month with special tributes by two area congregations. Figuring prominently is the holiest of all Jewish books, but each event has its own twist.
\”Mother used to leave jars full of schav in the refrigerator,\” says a friend of mine. \”Because the stuff looked like seaweed, I would run from the kitchen in horror.\”
It took a Long Beach Superior Court judge two minutes to free Thomas Lee Goldstein on April 2, releasing him after almost a quarter century behind bars for a crime he didn\’t commit. The white-haired former Marine from Kansas mourned a lifetime of missed opportunities.
In Hollye Leven\’s new rock \’n\’ roll musical, "Funny Business," comedians vie for attention at a seedy nightclub.
\”Like peeling an onion,\” Rabbi Steven Greenberg said, about the process of coming out.
\”Sort of Jewish\”,\”Jewish and something else\” \”might as well be Jewish\” are some of the ways people describe their Jewish identity in Sylvia Barack Fishman\’s significant new book probing the religious character of mixed-marriage households, \”Double or Nothing: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage.\”
The upcoming Los Angeles release of \”Hiding and Seeking\” follows its world premiere in mid-January as the opening-night selection of the New York Jewish Film Festival.
The Republicans are praying that President Bush\’s embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon\’s Gaza withdrawal plan will sway the Jewish vote.
The day my mother was transferred from a nursing home to a hospice, I raced from Baltimore to northeastern Pennsylvania. This 80-mph excursion into death — my mother\’s death — might rescue me from whatever boredom and tedium had enveloped me, but it would also plunge me into a realm where I didn\’t necessarily relish going. But go I went. For you see, there was no choice.
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