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April 7, 2010
Parashat Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47)
Sometimes, context is everything. That is particularly true when it comes to this week’s Torah portion, Shemini. Soon after enumerating the laws of\nkashrut, Shemini turns to ritual purity and the mikveh. What, if anything, does eating have to do with purity and holiness?
Expert Mystery-Making by Worthy Heir to Famous Family Name
Four years ago, Jesse Kellerman famously entered the family business when he published his first novel, “Sunstroke.” His father is Jonathan Kellerman and his
mother is Faye Kellerman, both of whom are name-brand mystery novelists in their own rights.
Skirball’s ‘Monsters’ Tells Tale of Beloved Jewish Picture Books
A demon king morphs into a King Solomon look-alike in Mark Podwal’s eerie illustration for Elie Wiesel’s children’s story, “King Solomon and His Magic Ring.” A cartoonish ghostly silhouette looms over tombstones in Barbara Rogasky’s “Dybbuk.” A misanthropic ogre, whose name means “fear” in Yiddish, becomes the hero of William Steig’s 1990 book “Shrek!” — now a successful movie franchise. And an angst-ridden potato pancake desperately seeks Chanukah in Lemony Snicket’s “The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming.”
The Wagner Problem
“Amoral, hedonistic, selfish, virulently racist, arrogant, filled with gospels of the superman … and the superiority of the German race, he stands for all that is unpleasant in human character,” The New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg wrote about Richard Wagner in “The Lives of the Great Composers.”
Namvar Quits Nessah Synagogue Board
Facing mounting community criticism for his alleged involvement in what has been called a Ponzi scheme, Ezri Namvar, an Iranian-Jewish philanthropist and businessman, last month voluntarily resigned from the\nBoard of Trustees of the Beverly Hills-based Nessah Synagogue. Namvar sent an e-mail on March 16 to Nessah’s board members, notifying the organization of his immediate resignation. Namvar was forced into involuntary bankruptcy in December 2008 and accused by investors of creating a Ponzi scheme that lost as much as $500 million loaned to him — most of it by Los Angeles’ Iranian Jews.
New Holocaust Documentary Goes ‘Against the Tide’
If Jews do not help other Jews, then they cannot accuse other people of standing by passively, proclaimed Peter Bergson, the central figure of the new Simon Wiesenthal Center documentary, “Against the Tide.”
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Print Issue: Who’s Funding It? | May 10, 2024
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