Does Peter Marks Have Castration Anxiety?

We’re actually starting to worry a little bit about Peter Marks. Granted, there were some hard feelings back in May when he savaged Theater J’s production of David In Shadow and Light. His review plus the Post Weekend Section’s gratuitous pile-on in their Should You Go? feature effectively killed the show (to be fair, along [...]

This Week at the 16th Street J

Hot Times in The City Summer Day Camp
Session II Begins Monday, June 30
Spots still available in Camp Skate, JKids and for CITs (we’ll even pro-rate if you’re reading this after Monday 6/30)
Is your kid spending the summer at Camp XBox? Get them off the couch and into the best urban camp in the country.
The Annual [...]

Buy Our Fake Oranges

Looking for that perfect something for the person who has everything? How about 1000 fake oranges, complete with little, green “Jaffa” stickers on them?
As part of the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery’s exhibit L(a)ttitudes, Avner Bar Hama created a map of Israel entirely out of these oranges. Now that the exhibit is over, they need a [...]

Shabbat Surfing: Iranian Shell Game

How is Iran, with all its well-publicized economic woes financing its clandestine nuclear ambitions that so endanger Israel? Nuts. And Israel is aiding and abetting.
The first gay wedding in California happened under a chuppah. Hopefully, the happy couple received fewer lame mezuzahs than my wife and I did.
Lots of posts all over the blogosphere bemoaning [...]

Differing (L)attitudes–Chicago and DC

It was both interesting and sad to see our worst fears for this past spring’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery exhibition (L) attitudes, a show about mapping Israel/Palestine, realized in a similar exhibition at Chicago’s Spertus Museum which closed their exhibit Imaginary Coordinates early. What never happened in DC came to pass in Chicago: a controversial [...]

What Are We Doing This Weekend? Four Seasons Lodge

Silverdocs always has a bunch of good Jewish-themed films and this year is no exception. One of the films we’re excited to see is Four Seasons Lodge, about a group of Holocaust survivors who meet annually at the Catskills bungalow colony that gives the documentary its name. It is screening this Sunday at 5:30 pm– [...]

Shabbat Surfing–Good Idea, Bad Idea

JTA’s new blog on Jewish philanthropy The Fundermentalist (get it?) kicks-off with a bang by scooping Yossi Beilin’s claim that he invented the Birthright program sending kids on free trips to Israel courtesy of mega-philanthropists Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman. What impressed us what not the scoop itself, but where the Fundermentalist got it:
Beilin, speaking [...]

On Being a Jewish Artist

Posting this piece that was originally published in the Washington DCJCC’s Center in the City June edition. Even though the Music Festival is half-over, I thought it was still apt.

Artists sometimes run away from the label of “Jewish” because it can be seen as limiting in much the same way that other hyphenates can [...]

Q Street Preschool Exclusive: Obama and Clinton Talk on the Phone

We’re not the first to observe that the Democratic primary season has gone on for a long time. How long? Well, in our Q Street Preschool the Yanshufim class that began a Reggio Emilia-inspired project looking at politics back in January, thinking it would be an undertaking demanding their attention for a few weeks, has [...]

Rhythm and Ruth

The timing of Friday’s free children’s program, Rhythm and Roots: The Afro-Semitic Experience could not be more perfect. This year’s Washington Jewish Music Festival occurs immediately before the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which begins Sunday evening, June 8.
 
Rhythm and Roots explores the Jewish and African diasporas through interactive music-making. On Shavuot, we read the Book [...]