A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a seminar room at UCLA’s Royce Hall attending a presentation by professor David Shneer of the University of Denver concerning Jewish museums in Los Angeles, a city he calls, “The Newest Jewish City in the World.” As someone who has argued that Los Angeles is the […]

Recently I asked a 15-year-old boy what music he listened to. His answer: “No one you ever heard of.” A perfect answer. Because what every fan needs, what every person should have, is music that is his own. Over the years, there’s been a lot of music that has mattered to me. That I have […]

What better way to start the New Year than by sprinkling a little literary paprika? Consider this: Mark Sarvas, a New York-born son of Hungarian parents, a voracious reader, a Francophile and a foodie, comes to Los Angeles to be a writer, sells some screenplays and starts an acclaimed literary blog, The Elegant Variation (marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar […]

Recently, I attended a screening of “Swimming in Auschwitz,” a still unreleased documentary directed by Jon Kean about the experience in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp of six women — Eva Beckmann, Rena Drexler, Renee Firestone, Erika Jacobi, Lili Majzner and Linda Sherman — all of whom survived and today live in the Los Angeles area. The […]

Tom Teicholz tellsJewish jokes Let us quote from sacred text: the 2005 Emmy Award acceptance speech by “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. Spaketh Stewart: “When I first said that I wanted us to put together a late-night comedy writing team that would only be 80 percent Ivy League-educated Jews, people thought I was crazy. They […]

David Mamet has written a book, “The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred and the Jews” (Shocken/Nextbook), that is by turns bold, courageous, and outrageous — it is a book that calls Diaspora Jews to the table and asks: “In or Out?” “The underlying premise of the book,” Mamet told me recently, “is to all Jews: If […]

When Israel is discussed these days, more often than not it is in terms of an existential crisis, or “the situation,” or as the subject of international news headlines. However, reading recently published works by three different Israeli fiction authors, Etgar Keret, Benjamin Tammuz and A.B. Yehoshua, is a bracing reminder that there is an […]

To meet him, you might think Steven Rubin is a normal person. Tall, handsome, happily married with young children, he is personable, affable — in short, one of the gentlest and nicest guys you could meet. But he is a man obsessed with war — World War II to be precise. Recently, Rubin launched www.ww2daily.com, […]

“Hannah Montana,” a Disney Channel program I watch on occasion with my daughter, features a 14-year-old girl with a secret identity: she’s actually a rock star. This is an absurd fantasy. In real life, the rock star at my daughter’s school is a mom. Although she leads a double life, it is no secret. Her […]

The fall season is upon us, with new books, movies and TV programs all vying for our attention as palliatives to the news of war, terrorism and melting ice caps. Even as the days get shorter and our own day of judgment looms imminent, we wonder: Is there a hero out there who can set […]