Consider, then, Shalom Auslander. In his corrosively funny memoir, \”Foreskin\’s Lament,\” he claims he is a foreskin: singled out, cut off and cast forth. In reality, he is something much more Jewish, almost essentially so. He\’s an apikores, a heretic.
\”Fiddler On the Roof\” opened on Broadway more than 40 years ago this month. The show, with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Joseph Stein, was instantly popular, won numerous Tony Awards and has been successfully revived numerous times, but for me and members of my high school production, it was our introduction to a world beyond our small Western town.
Amir Bar-Lev began his documentary, \”My Kid Could Paint That,\” after he tired of creating television programs about pop culture for networks such as VH-1.
Community briefs.
As Cantor Sarah J. Sager began her research, she found there were many people — both women and men — who were thinking about the silence of women in the Jewish tradition, and working to create \”a sense of women\’s presence at the most important moments of our history and in our most sacred text,\” Sager later wrote. But there was no one place to find all that commentary. Fifteen years later, the WRJ is publishing \”The Torah: A Women\’s Commentary,\” edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, a professor at the Los Angeles branch of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Circuit briefs.
\”I\’m feeling shtetl fabulous,\” singer Ari Gold confesses on the opening track of \”Transport Systems,\” his fourth studio album and the first to reflect his creative vision from concept to completion.
Letters to the Editor.
Tom Lantos, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, made headlines last April when he reiterated his desire to travel to Iran for informal talks with Iranian officials. And yet one month later the Democratic congressman from San Mateo introduced a tough Iran divestment bill with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) that the House overwhelmingly passed last week.\n
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