Category Arts & Culture

Celebrating Canadian teams

photo - In 2012, Avi Dunkelman and his business partner, Joseph Gault, won a five-year contract from Canada Post to create a postage stamp series celebrating 100 years of the National Hockey League

In 2012, Avi Dunkelman and his business partner, Joseph Gault, won a five-year contract from Canada Post to create a postage stamp series celebrating 100 years of the National Hockey League. (image from Avi Dunkelman) It was as if he…

History, literature vital

photo - Rachel Seelig, author of Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature Between East and West, 1919-1933

Rachel Seelig, author of Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature Between East and West, 1919-1933. (photo by Lauren Kurc) Rachel Seelig’s Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature Between East and West, 1919-1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2016) encompasses so many…

Journey of memory and loss

photo - Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova found classrooms, textbooks, a synagogue, prayer books, clothing and ritual ornaments, all lovingly cared for, undisturbed, unmolested and somehow cherished since the scooping up of three-quarters of the Jews in the towns of Slovakia in 1942

Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova found classrooms, textbooks, a synagogue, prayer books, clothing and ritual ornaments, all lovingly cared for, undisturbed, unmolested and somehow cherished since the scooping up of three-quarters of the Jews in the towns of Slovakia in…

Past leads to present

book cover - The Ship to Nowhere: On Board the Exodus by Rona Arato

For many of us, it is hard to get excited about a subject until we can experience it, or meet someone who has. Historical fiction can bridge the gap between simply memorizing dates and names to empathizing with those affected…

3,000 years of a language

Let’s say it at the outset: this book is a gem. Every page of The Story of Hebrew by Lewis Glinert (Princeton University Press, 2017) is packed with information about the language, from its beginnings through post-1948 Israel. In addition…

Great editor, great memoir

book cover - Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb, cropped

Robert Gottlieb is the most renowned American book editor and publisher in the latter half of the 20th century, much as was the legendary Max Perkins in the first half. And in his riveting memoir – Avid Reader: A Life…

Family History series launch

photo - Don’t Break the Chain is the first publication of what the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia hopes will become a Family History series

Don’t Break the Chain is the first publication of what the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia hopes will become a Family History series. The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia has released the first book in what…

Adding jazz to people’s lives

photo - Although he plays several instruments, the trumpet remains Gabriel Mark Hasselbach’s first love and his first choice

Although he plays several instruments, the trumpet remains Gabriel Mark Hasselbach’s first love and his first choice. (photo from Gabriel Mark Hasselbach) Music is a dazzling mistress. Once Gabriel Mark Hasselbach fell in love with it, he could never let…

Hear My Music premières

photo - At the première of Hear My Music at Labia Theatre in Cape Town on Feb. 15, are, left to right, Ntandazo (Didi) Gcingca, associate producer, and Dizu Plaatjies, the documentary’s subject, with Wendy Bross Stuart and Ron Stuart of WRS Productions

At the première of Hear My Music at Labia Theatre in Cape Town on Feb. 15, are, left to right, Ntandazo (Didi) Gcingca, associate producer, and Dizu Plaatjies, the documentary’s subject, with Wendy Bross Stuart and Ron Stuart of WRS…