Professor Plum in the library with a lead pipe? That might be the solution to a game of “Clue,” but in the new board game “Chametz: The Search Is On!” the more likely culprit is Professor Slivovitz, who is sullying the house with bits of a dreaded cupcake.
Veteran musician Matthew Lazar said in a recent interview that “singing in a choir is paradigmatic of community,” but a choir, as shown by the 18th annual HaZamir Festival and Gala Concert, also creates community. Held on March 27, the concert featured nearly 300 members of HaZamir, the International Jewish High School Choir — all teenagers from Los Angeles, Israel and elsewhere in the United States, representing “so many different walks of life,” said Lazar, founder and director of HaZamir’s parent organization, the Zamir Choral Foundation.
On the morning of April 10, Janice Kamenir-Reznik will march up Topanga Canyon Boulevard holding up signs and a megaphone to lead thousands of people in chants to raise awareness of the ongoing genocides in Sudan and Congo. And while she probably won’t show it that morning, cheerleading is Kamenir-Reznik’s least favorite part of her job as co-founder and president of Jewish World Watch.
Zula is a delightful beachside restaurant where you can breathe in the salty air as Eyal Golan songs play in the background. It also advertises the best falafel in town, made with local garbanzo beans.
A Passover haggadah is something like an article of clothing — a great many styles and sizes are available, it can be tailored to suit one’s own needs and tastes, and we can always make one of our own. The readings and rituals, stories and songs that decorate the observance of Passover are as diverse as the Jewish people itself. Now, as Jewish families around the world prepare to sit down at the seder table, here are a few new and noteworthy examples.
Author Hillel Halkin, reviewing the Koren Sacks Siddur in the spring 2010 Jewish Review of Books, recounts a charming story that he heard from his father:
Pamela and Randol Schoenberg host a free community concert featuring liturgical compositions for organ and chorus by composers Arnold Schoenberg and Eric Zeisl. Timed to the bat mitzvah of Dora Schoenberg, Arnold Schoenberg’s great-granddaughter, the musical tribute also includes the premiere of Samuel Adler’s “From Generation to Generation.”
Better late than never, but not much better. How else can one respond to the belated retraction by Judge Richard Goldstone of the key allegations in the outrageous report he authored into Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009? Blatantly dishonest and biased, what became known as the Goldstone Report served as the most vicious instrument of defamation and delegitimization against the Jewish state for decades. It gave heart to terrorists; it gave hope to anti-Semites; and it gave every twisted calumny against the State of Israel a new lease on life.
Richard Goldstone’s reconsideration of the controversial fact-finding report on the Gaza war of 2008-09 is the latest Rorschach test for the Jewish community. It has elicited a wide range of reactions, from ecstatic claims of exoneration to lingering bitterness at the report’s “blood libel,” as Caroline Glick and Jeffrey Goldberg have branded it. My own sense in reading Goldstone’s Washington Post op-ed was a measure of relief that the report’s most serious allegation — that Israel intentionally targeted civilians in Gaza — was unfounded.
A few years ago, British poet and Oxford don Tom Paulin offered a view on what should be done to certain Jewish settlers. “[They] should be shot dead,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly. “I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them.” As for Israel itself, it was, he said, “an historical obscenity.”
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