Twenty-three years ago, Lisa Szilagyi gave birth to her first child, Emily, who was diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis, a genetic disease that causes tumors to grow on vital organs. It resulted in severe epilepsy and essentially made Emily nonverbal.
Tradition tells us that the Gates of Repentance stay open until the end of Sukkot. The intensity of Yom Kippur has diminished, but we still remember the hours together, knocking on our hearts, trying to do spiritual CPR, to wake us up to the truth of our lives.
Yad Vashem posthumously recognized the Italian cycling champion Gino Bartali as Righteous Among the Nations.
In the prologue to his new memoir, “The Friedkin Connection,” Academy Award-winning director William Friedkin writes, “Life is lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”
How does an irreligious Jew find consolation at a religious service? Seeking such consolation, I attended the Hillel at UCLA High Holy Days services conducted by Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller. I don’t often go to services, but in February our oldest daughter, Robin, died, and I felt drawn there.
If you thought your beautiful new spouse was cheating on you, wouldn’t you create a disguise and test her fidelity? Ferenc Molnar’s comic game of love and marriage may or may not remind you of you and yours, but with wit and deception aplenty, it’ll certainly be fun to watch. Directed by Michael Michetti. Sat. 8 p.m. Through Nov. 30. $34-$54. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. (626) 356-3100. anoisewithin.org.
Jewish-innovation advocate Shawn Landres praised the Liberty Hill Foundation when the social change organization named him the recipient of its 2013 NextGen Award during its recent Change L.A. ceremony, but he could have just as easily been speaking about the diversity of the city he calls home.
The stirring scene that opens “Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation,” by Yossi Klein Halevi (Harper, $35), is a flashback to the night of June 6, 1967, when the 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces crossed the no man’s land from West Jerusalem and approached the Old City, a sacred place that had not been under Jewish sovereignty for nearly 2,000 years.
Too many books about Israel try to tell us what to think or feel. Whether from the left or right, it seems that the subject of Israel brings out the emotional partisan in many of us. We feel strongly one way or the other, so we like to read books or articles that support our opinions.
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