By ALAN SMASON, Special to the CCJN
On February 15, 1981 rock music lost one of its early favorite sons, a guitarist who oversaw the transition of pop and folk music into a medium that featured electric amplification and extended solo blues performances. That man was Michael Bloomfield and his...
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Reviewed by ALAN SMASON, CCJN Editor
While the subject of ordaining women as rabbis still resonates very strongly today within the Orthodox community, the Reform movement has, with the ordination of Rabbi Sally Preisand in 1972, accepted women as rabbis. That is a historical fact. The story of her own...
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By REBECCA ROSENTHAL
(Kveller via JTA) — This summer, as I put my 8-year-old on the bus to sleepaway camp, he turned to his friend and said, “Let’s get on the bus quickly before our parents can say goodbye and be so embarrassing.”
As they ran toward the bus, I...
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(JTA) — Rabbi Maurice Lamm, the author of “The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning” and several other notable Jewish books, has died.
Lamm died Wednesday night “surrounded by his wife, children and grandchildren singing him to the heavens,” his granddaughter Lisa Lamm Pasternak said in a Facebook post. He...
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(JTA) — Israeli author Etgar Keret has been named the recipient of the 2016 Charles Bronfman Prize.
The prize recognizes Keret’s work “conveying Jewish values across cultures and imparting a humanitarian vision throughout the world,” the prize said in an announcement Wednesday.
The annual prize, which carries a $100,000 award,...
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By ALAN SMASON
And After the Fire by Lauren Belfer. Harper Collins Publishers, New York City. 2016. 451 pp. $26.99
Is it possible for music that lifts the soul to come from a place of hatred? This is part of the underpinning theme of Lauren Belfer’s most recent historical novel...
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By PENNY SCHWARTZ
(JTA) — Afikomen hunts, a rambunctious pup and the catchy classic “Dayenu.” All are featured in a half-dozen new Passover books for children that will inform and entertain even the littlest kid — or a whole herd of ’em.
The eight-day holiday kicks off this year on the...
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(JTA) — Imre Kertesz, a Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died.
Kertesz, who portrayed the horrors of Auschwitz in some of his writings, died Thursday at his Budapest home, said his publisher, the Magyeto Kiado firm. He was 86 and reportedly suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
...(JTA) — Dennis Ross, a former top U.S. official, and Shulem Deen, who wrote about leaving the Hasidic world, were among the winners of 2015 National Jewish Book Awards.
“Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle For Israel, 1917-1947,” a book by Bruce Hoffman about Jewish operations in prestate Israel, was tapped as...
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(JTA) – The Federal Court of Canada will consider a lawsuit filed by three filmmakers alleging that a Canadian author and her publisher plagiarized a family history presented in their documentary.
Judy Maltz, an Israeli-American journalist, along with Barbara Bird and Richie Sherman, both associate professors of film at Penn...
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