Like some of his Jewish contemporaries to the south, Canadian novelist Mordechai Richler has mined a literary career from the fertile terrain of assimilationist Jewish culture, most notably inbooks such as \”The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz\” and \”Joshua Then and Now.\”
In the disturbing opening sequence of \”The Long Way Home,\” a survivor recalls the horrified stares of her American liberators at Bergen-Belsen. \”I saw one…double over and throw up and then another and another,\” she says. \”I saw they were looking at [me] in disgust,and a deep despair came over me.\”
Attention,anyone who was ever married or bar mitzvahed at Etz Jacob Congregation at 7659 Beverly Blvd.: The shul wants testimonials, photographs and memorabilia for an exhibit honoring its 80thanniversary. The temple is the oldest in Beverly-Fairfax, and, according to Rabbi Rubin Huttler, it\’s in large part responsible for creating the Jewish enclave around Fairfax Avenue.
What a peculiar piece of work is \”Bent.\” The film version of Martin Sherman\’s play, first presented on the London stage in 1979,and later on Broadway, has taken almost 20 years to come to the screen. It\’s not difficult to see why. Not only is it turgid stuff,with a paucity of unfilmable ideas, but in an industry that sometimes seems to specialize in specious history, it will be hard to match this one for irresponsibility.
Before Carl Reiner invented the \”Dick Van Dyke Show\” and thetemperamental, toupee-clad Alan Brady, before Mel Brooks was aYiddish-spouting Indian chief in \”Blazing Saddles,\” indeed, beforethe dawn of Christianity, there was The 2000 Year Old Man.
Project 9865, named after the 18-year-old oil derrick\’s OlympicBoulevard address, has several interwoven artistic, social and evenpolitical components.
When Dr. William H. Parker talks, women listen. As chair of theobstetrics and gynecology department at Santa Monica-UCLA MedicalCenter and a clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, hisjob depends on being able to give clear, calm answers to the fraughtquestions of women\’s health: \”What\’s an abnormal period?\” \”What doPap smear results mean?\” \”What are the risks of a hysterectomy?\”
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