But this is 21st century America, not 18th century Poland or 20th century Germany. Pew tells us that Americans are switching religions like never before. Do we want to enter the competition armed with our wonderful 3,000-year-old history, or kvetch about assimilation, intermarriage and our dwindling numbers?
AUDIO: Iranian American Jews — Dennis Prager and Shmuley Boteach praise local community
Vitolda Nahshonov, 15, is one of 10 teens brought to Los Angeles from Sderot by the Israeli Leadership Club and the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles to share her story of what it\’s like to live under constant attack from Qassam rockets. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.
Ten years ago, this would not have been: Steven Bernstein, a jazz trumpeter whose most popular bands include the Sex Mob and a Kansas City-style big band, leading a group playing jazz-inflected cantorial tunes. But at a recent Sunday night gig at the Jazz Standard in New York, Bernstein was doing just that.
Seated at his office in Beverly Hills, Ben Mittleman, 57, doesn\’t have a trace of gray in his sandy-brown hair. He says his mother used to kid him that he must have had a \”facelift or something,\” but despite the fact that this veteran TV actor turned director-producer looks 10 years younger than his age, he underwent heart surgery in 2001. That experience is the subject of \”Dying to Live,\” along with his response to the cancers that later took the lives of both his mother and his wife, Valerie. The film premieres Thursday, March 13, at Laemmle\’s Music Hall, where it will screen for two weeks.
Generating buzz for pop music was once the territory of MTV and radio, but television advertisements are quickly becoming musical tastemakers, and there is no hipper marketer on this front than Apple. No wonder, then, that Yael Naim\’s song, \”New Soul,\” featured in the ubiquitous MacBook Air commercial, has garnered the French Israeli singer a nearly instant burst of popularity.
The Israeli film, \”Beaufort,\” has earned international recognition for its unvarnished portrayal of men at war and for its acting, directing and cinematography. But the movie is even more remarkable for what it tells us about the inner strength of the embattled country in confronting the vulnerabilities of its most revered institutions, even while the wounds of the first and second Lebanon wars are still fresh.
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