From The Canadian Jewish News, January 2014 Canadian, Israeli-born writer Ayelet Tsabari, whose first book of short stories The Best Place on Earth was recently published by HarperCollins of Toronto, writes with amazing intensity not only about modern Israelis, but also about the small Mizrachi (“Eastern”) Jewish minority in Israel; her grandparents came from Yemen.…
Profile: The Latchman Triplets
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•From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Fall 2012 In 1933, Toronto residents Philip and Sally Latchman were surprised by the birth of triplets — three identical boys, Donald, Marvin and Victor — a blessed event that prompted Buckingham Palace to send them a ceremonial payment of several British pounds sterling. “When we were born the King of…
Meeting Nehemiah Persoff at David’s Deli, San Francisco
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•The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district remain calm. And why not? They have paid $7 to attend the San Francisco Experience, a 28-minute multi-media show that promises that “you will feel the earth shake.” Utilizing a…
Stones of Remembrance installed in Vienna sidewalks
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•From Canadian Jewish News, July 2013 Toronto psychologist Dr. Edna Magder was just a baby when the Nazis deported her grandmother from Vienna, but she knows it wasn’t the first time the Nazis had come to her grandmother’s door. A group of drunken Nazi soldiers had previously visited her grandmother — Theresia Hanni Brodi —…
Motherless Child: gothic romance set in world of classical music
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•Book Review, Motherless Child, by Marianne Langner Zeitlin (Zephyr Press) Motherless Child, Toronto-born author Marianne Langner Zeitlin’s third novel in as many decades, is a superbly-wrought romantic page-turner that has elements in it of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, with more than a touch of the latter’s gothic essence. Set during…
Remembering screenwriter Robert Riskin
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•Devil in the White City: Murder & Chicago World’s Fair, 1893
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•In this riveting page-turner that reads like a murder mystery thriller, Erik Larson resurrects the legend of a forgotten American psychopathic mass murderer, the cold-blooded H. H. Holmes, and overlays it atop the equally dusty story of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, one of the most impressive achievements of gilded-age America. Satisfying the modern…
Profile: Jerry & Naomi Goldenberg
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•Bone Button Borscht with Barbara Budd
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•From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into a pot and add some flavourful compositions for full orchestra, rich klezmer sounds, a pinch of Hanukkah seasoning and live narration by Barbara Budd, the Toronto-based actor and co-host of the immensely popular CBC radio…
The Man Who Would Be Messiah (1999)
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•From the Globe and Mail, 1999 ◊ I wrote this article for the Globe’s Ideas & Beliefs column in 1999, a mere six years after Rabbi Schneerson’s death, when the Lubavitch world seemed to be pulling apart over the issue of his messianic status and who would be his successor. Don’t know what’s happened…