Report from the first Rapid Responsa: Race, Resentment and the “Obama Moment”

Stephen Stern, Director of Dialogues and Public Affairs writes: 
Nine days after Presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered his “A More Perfect Union” speech, I had the privilege of facilitating a discussion on “race and resentment” at the Washington DCJCC.  Chief Program Officer Joshua Ford and I organized our first Rapid Responsa to address what seemed a rare cultural [...]

Shabbat Surfing: Big Weekend For Jewish Films

The most exciting thing going on this weekend? The Cherry Blossom Festival? Nah, only inflames my allergies. The National Marathon? I’m more of a treadmill guy. Opening of the Nats new Stadium? Couldn’t score tickets (and we tried). NCAA tournament? My bracket’s already gone to gehena (thanks for nothing Georgetown).  
No, the most exciting thing about this weekend is the explosion of [...]

Berman Hebrew Academy Students Make My Senior Skip Day Look Shallow

Back in the good ole analog days, when I was in high school, “Senior Skip Day” (you might have called it “Cut Day” or “Ditch Day” or “I Got Into College and I Am Sooo Over High School Day” was a day for frivolity, goofing off, and in my case heading down to the Jersey [...]

Sneak Preview of “Then She Found Me”

The Screening Room is holding a free screening next Friday, April 4 at 5:00 pm of Helen Hunt’s directorial debut Then She Found Me. It’s a remarkable film and a little unexpected coming from Hunt who made a career out of playing the ultimate shiksa in the 90s television series Mad About You opposite professional [...]

Taking the Opportunity to Talk About Race

An interesting article from last week’s New York Times covers the national response to Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race outside the context of its political success or failure. The article quotes Rev. Joel Hunter, the senior pastor of a white evangelical mega-church in Central Florida, who described Obama’s speech as a kind of “Rorschach [...]

Rapid Responsa: An Invitation to Meet on 3/27 and Talk About Obama’s Philadelphia Speech on Race and Resentment

This Thursday, March 27, the 16th Street J invites you to join us at 7:30 pm in the bricks and mortar world for a discussion about race, resentment and the cultural moment signified by Barack Obama’s speech on race. We will use Obama’s speech as a “source text” and an opportunity to move beyond political [...]

Shabbat Surfing: The Rich Set Him Up! (?)

Could Eliot Spitzer be the Jewish Marion Barry? The inevitable conspiracy theories surface at Jewlicious. They might be worth pursuing, you know, if he hadn’t actually admitted to spending eighty large on hookers.
Tom Ricks on washingtonpost.com ran excerpts of a report on how concentrating on counter-insurgency operations degraded the IDF’s ability to fight a more conventional [...]

March Madness, Purim Pandemonium

There’s something poetic in the nearly simultaneous launching of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and the holiday of Purim. They both herald times of great revelry and amusement, behavior just outside the norm, and of course, the dutiful consumption of alcoholic beverages. Beyond that, both contain stories of underdogs triumphing over greater powers to ensure [...]

Theater J Wins Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline

(clockwise from top: Catherine Frels, Ari Roth, Hannah Hessel, Simone Zvi, Delia Taylor, Patricia Jenson, Rebecca Ende)
Congratulations to Ari Roth, Artistic Director of Theater J along with the entire staff for receiving the Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline last night in a ceremony at the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Stage. The entire [...]

A Brief Interview with Max Brooks, Zombie Expert

Q: Since the release of your books, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and The Zombie Survival Guide have you seen a greater public awareness of the zombie threat? In other words, how goes the struggle?
A: Very good, but never good enough. If you can’t save everyone, you’ve saved no one.
Q: [...]