The Jewish Book Council's 2012 book of the year is not one book but three: the three volume box set City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York published last September by New York University Press.
Tomorrow is election day. Most years most voters in the City of New York know where their polling place is located; the Board of Elections usually does a good job of notifying voters where to vote well in advance. But a week after super-storm Sandy some polling places in storm damaged areas have been moved.
In a notice to voters NYC Public Advocate Bill Deblasio urges voters to double check where their polling places are located:
"Because of damage to schools and other public buildings, roughly 143,000 voters have been assigned to new polling sites in recent days. Please be sure to verify your poll site before you go to vote. You can do so by texting “NYCVOTES” to 877-877 and following the prompts or you can visit the Board of Elections poll site locator.
"Please be aware that poll sites in areas severely impacted by Hurricane Sandy are subject to last-minute changes so if you have trouble voting tomorrow, call the Board of Elections' voter hotline at 866-VOTE-NYC.
"Poll sites will be open from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M. If you have any questions or problems, you can reach the Public Advocate's hotline at 212.669-7250 or by emailinggethelp@pubadvocate.nyc.gov. "
To summarize, verify the location of your polling place before heading out to vote.
Many of the artists will be present at the opening and happy to talk about their work. Some of the art works are nudes, but parents who are not prudes will find the exhibit child friendly.
What happens when a New York Jewish pack-rat daughter inherits her New York Jewish pack-rat father's belongings? She embarks on a Jewish genealogical search for her and her dad's long lost relatives. Nancy K. Miller's What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past, published today by University of Nebraska Press, is the story of that search, a story that focuses more on the process of the search than on its results. In my New York Journal of Books review I quote Ms. Miller, “Every new piece of information keeps me on the road to the ever-expanding possibility of the quest, a quest that in the end will still yield only partial knowledge—and will never give me, return to me, those past lives.” Ms. Miller, a retired CUNY Graduate Center English and Comparative Literature professor, is an appealing prose stylist, but because of its focus on the genalogical search process this book will mostly appeal to genealogy buffs in general and Jewish genealogy buffs in particular.
For more info: David Cooper
This article first appeared on the late Examiner.com
Today New York publisher The Dial Press, a division of Random House, releases Haley Tanner's debut novel Vaclav and Lena, a coming of age tale about Russian-Jewish immigrant children in Brooklyn. In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as "a tale of unconditional love; of attachment, separation, and reunion; and of trauma and healing." It's an engaging read that will appeal to teens, their parents, and anyone interested in the immigrant experience.
Ms. Tanner is a Brooklyn resident who got the idea for the story when she was a tutor whose students were Russian immigrant children not unlike the novel's title characters. For a view of more affluent, better educated suburban Russian-Jewish immigrants try The Cosmopolitans by Nadia Kalman.
For more info: David Cooper
via the late examiner.com
Today is Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, and I’d like to mark the day by sharing an oral-history from The Jewish-American Marriage Oral History Project of a couple of Jewish New Yorkers and artists who throughout their half-century marriage have alternated their residence between Israel and the United States. I interviewed Petach Tikvah, Israel residents Mel and Miriam Alexenberg a year and ten months ago at a restaurant overlooking Rockefeller Center during one of their visits to the city where they met and married.
As in my interviews with Fred Terna and Rebecca Shiffman, Gary and Judy Simon, Mindi Wernick and Malkie Grozalsky, Keith and Cindy Hamada, and Nadav Avital and Buffie Marie Longmire Avital, to make the interview read like a dialogue I have edited out my questions; for clarity the interview subjects sometimes rephrase a question as a statement, and where this occurs it indicates a change of subject. I began the interview by asking how they met.
Read the entire interview on jewishamericanmarriage.com
Boy donates bar mitzvah money to help 'Liberty' musical make it to Broadway
Joanna Molloy
Wednesday, April 6th 2011, 4:00 AM
Adams for News
Jesse Naranjo (c.) stands with his mother Rachel, father Rodrigo, and sister Sophia. He donated all of his bar mitzvah money.
NY Times film critic A.O. Scott will give four lectures with illustrative film clips on The Holocaust in Film on consecutive Sunday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 PM starting this Sunday March 20, 2010 at Park Slope Jewish Center (where Mr. Scott is a member) located at Eighth Avenue and 14th Street in Brooklyn.
Continue reading on Examiner.com: NY Times film critic A.O. Scott to teach Holocaust in film class - New York NY | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/ny-in-new-york/ny-times-film-critic-a-o-scott-to-teach-holocaust-film-class#ixzz1Go4Grzcm
Should you or your loved ones find yourselves in an emergency situation, rather than take your chances with New York's 911 system you may want to call Hatzalah, the volunteer Jewish EMS service.
Art works in Tabla Rasa's ongoing exhibits in the front of the gallery are more expensive, but after viewing those exhibits continue to the backroom (where art works are stored and packed for shipping and the gallery owners have their office) for an art sale in which all art works have prices no greater than $400.
View the slideshow and read the entire article on examiner.com
Eight extraordinary comics creators will project their smart, funny and sexy comics on a big screen, accompanied by a soundtrack and shenanigans.
Read the entire article on examiner.com
The 10th of Tevet is the traditional day of remembrance for victims of violence whose death dates and/or burial places are unknown. Tonight, December 16, 2010 at 7:30 PM a memorial service and rally will be held at Brooklyn's Parade Grounds (adjacent to the Tennis Center across the street from Prospect Park) to remember all victims of violence as well as the recent suicides of gay young adults.
Read the entire article on examiner.com
"No one with 'literary' aspirations will expect to earn a living by publishing books; the glory days when publishers still waffled between patronage and commerce will be much lamented. The lit-lovers who used to become editors and agents will direct MFA programs instead; the book industry will become as rational—that is, as single-mindedly devoted to profit—as every other capitalist industry."
Will? Is it not to a considerable extent already so?
The author marks the boundaries of literary Brooklyn as DUMBO and Prospect Heights, but it is more accurate to draw its boundaries as a triangle that goes from Greenpoint in the northwest to Victorian Flatbush in the east to Red Hook in the southwest.
As a native New Yorker, Brooklynite, alumnus of a CCNY graduate creative writing program, poet/translator and fiction reviewer I am on the periphery of both literary cultures, and much of the article resonates with the ring of truth. However, in an era of government budget cuts I don't see MFA programs continuing to proliferate; indeed, they may prove vulnerable to the budget ax.
This year KinkyJews is holding their annual Hanukkah party at a comedy club. Some things will be the different (comedy show) and some will be the same as in previous years (a game of strip dreidle, traditional candle lighting, and eight raffle prizes).
Read the article on examiner.com
On Sunday afternoon, November 28th at 3pm Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn presents singer and pianist Lana Sokolov and saxophonist Sagit Zilberman in a performance of Jewish Love songs.
Read the article on examiner.com
Jewish Museum menorah pics from A Hanukkah Project: Daniel Libeskind s Line of Fire exhibit.
Hanukkah Lamp, Palestine (Israel) c. 1880-1930. Chiseled and painted limestone.
In "A Hanukkah Project: Daniel Libeskind's Line of Fire" 40 hanukkiot (Hanukkah menorahs) selected by curator Susan Braunstein from The Jewish Museum's permanent collection of over 500 hanukkiot are displayed on a stand designed by architect Daniel Libeskind.
Read the entire article and view a slideshow of the exhibited hanukkiot.
In March 1939, four months after Kristallnact and six months after the Munich agreement under which Czechoslovakia was compelled to cede the Sudetenland, the German speaking areas that abutted the German border, to Germany, German troops occupied the rest of Czech speaking Bohemia and Moravia in what is today the Czech Republic, and a puppet state was created in Slovak speaking Slovakia. Prague resident Fred Terna was then 15; he would spend his late teens and early twenties in the Lipa, Terezin, Auschwitz, and Kaufering concentration camps. After the war he married a fellow survivor, and after his first wife died of cancer Fred married Rebecca Shiffman, the daughter of survivors, in 1982.
I interviewed Fred and Rebecca in August 2007 in their Clinton Hill, Brooklyn brownstone. I began the interview by asking how they met.
Read the entire interview on jewishamericanmarriage.com
City Tech will mark the 72nd anniversary of Kristallnacht and the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII on Thursday, November 11, 1 p.m., with Ann Kirschner, PhD, author of Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story, and the presentation of humanitarian awards to Nobel Prize winner Günter Blobel, MD, PhD, and Interfaith Committee of Remembrance (ICOR) founder and chairman Jerry Jacobs.
Read the entire article on examiner.com
