By Robin Jacobson. Jewish texts and stories, however ancient, often seem eerily relevant to present-day events. This year, the Purim story reads like a newly reported sexual harassment scandal. Beauty pageants! Powerful men demeaning women! Even Queen Esther feels like a modern heroine. Like the women in the #MeToo movement, Esther broke silence, revealed her …
Have you ever davened in Israel ( at Shira Hadasha, Yakar…etc) Have you ever sung in a High School Choir? Have you ever attended a Jewish camp? If so, you have experienced the power of communal singing, a force that moves us to feel something that is often missing. I believe when we sing together …
Finding my expressive ‘voice’ is not an easy undertaking. I do not mean my voice which emerges through my throat. I am focused on my expressive voice which arises from my heart. In this regard, my voice is what makes me or you an interesting conversationalist to some people yet disagreeable to others. My voice …
By Robin Jacobson. “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” Exod. 23:9. Can reading books and stories help children develop empathy – to care about other people, especially those who are different from them? Recent scientific studies suggest the …
By Robin Jacobson. Children’s literature abounds with whimsical stories about characters that magically wander off the page into the real world. But for some adult book lovers and their special books, something like this actually occurs. Sometimes a book speaks so powerfully to a reader that it infuses and shapes the reader’s everyday life. This …
By Robin Jacobson. With Israel’s 70th birthday approaching, this is a good time to read and celebrate Israeli authors. Over the past several years, Beth El’s Book Club has read some exceptional books by Amos Oz, David Grossman, A.B. Yehoshua, Meir Shalev, and Etgar Keret, each offering a window into the nuances of Israeli culture …
By Robin Jacobson. Kids dig in the backyard searching for buried treasure. Adults roam flea markets hoping to spot the one precious item hidden in the jumble of useless odds and ends. It’s fun to fantasize about discovering a priceless prize; not surprisingly, many novels build their plots around such discoveries. Two recent examples are …
By Robin Jacobson. Russia is in the news a lot lately. Am I imagining that American Jews pay particular attention to news from that country? Millions of us descend from immigrants who fled Czarist Russia. One could speculate endlessly on what our family stories would be if those ancestors had stayed put. The thriving genre …
By Robin Jacobson. Seventy-five years ago this fall, the beloved Hollywood classic, Casablanca, first lit up American movie screens. Casablanca has enthralled generations of viewers with its stellar performances (by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains), iconic lines (“Round up the usual suspects,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “We’ll always have Paris”), glamorous Moroccan setting …
By Robin Jacobson. A few weeks ago, I impulsively signed up for an eight-part online course on Daniel Deronda, a 19th Century English novel by George Eliot. Why? I had never read the book, despite its fame as the Zionist novel that predated Zionism. But I remembered the movie fondly (English accents! Rolling green hills! …
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