http://www.jweekly.com en Copyright 2011 2011-10-17T19:38:22+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/62241/adam-mansbach-politely-asks-you-to-go-to-sleep http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/62241/adam-mansbach-politely-asks-you-to-go-to-sleep#When:22:21:59Z by rachel leibold | (image courtesy of Akashic Books) A while back, Overheard Newsroom tweeted this gem: "You can start a story with a quote twice in your career. Once when you're an intern, and again if the pope ever says f---." Adam Mansbach does say "f---" a lot, but he isn't the pope - therefore, it took all my willpower not to start this post with this absolutely perfect line from his new book: "The wind whispers soft through the grass, hon / The field mice, they make not a peep / It's been thirty-eight minutes already / Jesus Christ, what the f---? Go to sleep." If you haven't closed down your browser window in disgust by now, you may be the perfect audience for "Go the F--- to Sleep," Mansbach's new children's book - er, make that children's book for adults. ONLY. Seriously, this is R-rated stuff. The book is basically exactly what it sounds like: A whimsically illustrated, liltingly rhymed parental plea for their young child to stop asking for water, quit with the questions and please just go the f--- to sleep already. Mansbach, who is Jewish, lives in Berkeley and is the author of several books, including "The End of the Jews" and "Angry Black White Boy." The genesis of "Go the F--- to Sleep" (or GTFTS, as it's been dubbed on the Internet), as Mansbach explains it, was a joking Facebook status he posted about writing a book with that title, after yet another difficult time getting his now-3-year-old daughter, Vivien, to sleep. Adam Mansbach (photo by Sarah Millet) "I didn't intend to write it," Mansbach says over the phone from Martha's Vineyard, where he's doing a little work after finishing up teaching fiction writing in an MFA program at Rutgers University. A longtime lover of hip-hop, his cadence makes me feel as if he's going to break into a freestyle rap at any moment."But once I wrote that, I knew that I did know how to write it. So I sat down, and wrote it in two sittings." Because GTFTS is done in the style of a children's book, it had to be illustrated - and Mansbach immediately thought of his friend Ricardo Cortes, an author and illustrator who had once made his own children's book - "It's Just a Plant," about a little girl who discovers her parents smoking pot. Mansbach and Cortes worked together to conceptualize the art, which features pajama-clad children in a variety of fantastical and strange situations (hugging a pride of sleeping lions, parachuting into a farmer's field, playing bongos next to a mountain range) as well as normal domestic scenes of a child in their crib, finally asleep in bed, etc. While his previous books have been released by big publishing houses, Mansbach approached small Brooklyn-based Akashic Books about publishing GTFTS. "I love the work they do at the house, and I love the idea of working with independent publishers if I can," he says. What Akashic didn't realize was how big a hit the book would be. A viral marketing snafu got people talking: Somehow, a PDF of the book got leaked online, and soon it was being posted everywhere. At first, Mansbach and Akashic tried to limit the damage by sending cease-and-desist notices and just politely asking people to remove the link; eventually, though, they realized that the exposure was helping turn GTFTS into a license to print money. A month before its release, the book was already at No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller list, and it topped the New York Times list on its first week in print. (As of today, it's No. 4 on the Amazon Top 100.) Despite Akashic's small size, Mansbach assures me that "they've been completely on top of it. They're a small publisher, but they have great distribution." But the book has attracted the attention of more than just the sleep-deprived guardians of toddlers. In a move that made hipster parents across the country have apoplexies with delight, Samuel L. Jackson recorded an audiobook of GTFTS. And Fox 2000 has bought the movie rights. Um, movie rights? Mansbach isn't allowed to say much, except that he's not going to have anything to do with the screenplay, but will gladly go to the premiere. A writer-director has been hired and "it's a very open adaptation," he explains. He can reveal that it will be a live-action feature intended for adults (as if there were any question). (image courtesy of Akashic Books) Some have argued that Mansbach is able to "get away" with his profane book because he's a dad - that a woman, a mother, wouldn't be able to admit these feelings publicly without being lambasted for being a "bad mom." "There's some validity to that," Mansbach acknowledges. "It's more permissible, societally, for a father to express frustration in these kinds of ways. That's partly related to the genderization of humor and frustration and anger, but part of it is also the fact that it's still fairly unusual for people to consider that a man is taking primary care of a kid, or that he's in charge of putting a kid to bed. In that way, the book gives a little more visibility to fathers." Mansbach has long prided himself on being outside the mainstream - he's a white Jew who loves hip-hop, for one - and none of his previous books have enjoyed as much insta-success as GTFTS. Yet Mansbach insists this isn't his "sellout moment." "There was nothing calculated or intentional about this book," he says. "I wrote it whimsically and super quickly, but honestly, and with some attempt at craft. People who know me are sort of tickled by how it blew up because it's clear to them that this is me talking the same kind of s--- I'm always talking about, it just happened to hit a vein in the zeitgeist right now." That vein, he explains, is "a kind of honesty about parenting that has been sort of shut down by everyone's desire to appear to be a perfect parent…There's a constant conversation on any number of fronts about parenting, but people don't feel at liberty to admit the frustrations. It's hard to embody paradoxes and complexities." Vivien is a better sleeper now than she was when Mansbach wrote the book, though she still has difficult nights. Yet one of Mansbach's lessons from GTFTS is that his experiences weren't as bad as they could have been. "I've heard a lot of stories," he says, somewhat wearily, when I ask him if parents who have read the book have enlightened him with their own tales of going-to-bed-woe. "But I realized," he says after a moment, "that my daughter in many ways was relatively easy to deal with." blogs 2011-07-08T22:21:59+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/61266/whats-your-passover-soundtrack http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/61266/whats-your-passover-soundtrack#When:22:21:22Z by rachel leibold | Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday, largely because it has so many great songs. Chanukah, sure, some good songs there too, but they're a bit childish, maybe. Passover, however, has the motherlode of great Jewish ditties - Chad Gadya, Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One), Dayenu, Adir Hu - and even the rest of the seder sounds something like a Broadway musical, with participants randomly breaking into song (B'chol Dor VaDor, Mah Nishtana, Avadim Hayinu) as they read the haggadah. Thanks to the wealth of material, there's no shortage of Passover-themed albums, with everything from kiddie melodies (such as "One Morning When Pharoah Awoke in His Bed") to black slave spirituals ("Go Down Moses") to straight seder standards. My personal favorite, however, has to be Chaim Parchi's "Haggadah Songs," which I basically listened to nonstop when I was a kid (at least in the weeks leading up to Passover). Parchi, a music teacher and artist originally from Yemen, recorded over two dozen Passover melodies from a variety of Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions, as well as his own compositions. There's a Dayenu from Sarajevo, a Kadesh U'Rechatz from Salonika, Adir Hu from Bucharest, etc. This is some serious liturgical stuff - there are no frogs in the bed, let's put it that way - but it's done in such a spirited, joyous way that no matter how old you are, you'll be singing along after just one or two passes through the album. Many of the songs are repeated with different melodies (there are four versions of Chad Gadya, for example), but because the tunes are so wonderful and different, the repetition doesn't get old. At least one of the melodies has become the "official" version at my family's seders - Parchi's arrangement of B'chol Dor VaDor. Trust me, when you hear it, you'll never go back to the old tune (which I can barely remember, we've been singing Parchi's version for so long). "Haggadah Songs" can be purchased off Parchi's website, www.artmuz.com, for $20 - kind of pricey for a CD, but IMO totally worth it. You can also stream the songs for free at the really awesome Judaica Sound Archives from Florida Atlantic University (who knew?). What's your favorite Passover song and/or album? blogs 2011-03-28T22:21:22+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/60766/israelis-on-your-tv http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/60766/israelis-on-your-tv#When:22:28:57Z by rachel leibold | Israelis are all over the tube these days, both on and off the screen. Here's where you can find them: Oded Fehr (right) with Morris Chestnut on "V" V If ABC's sci-fi show "V" can't be bothered with any sort of interesting plot advancement or a modicum of un-nauseating writing, at least they could give their (probably almost non-existent) female audience a bit of eye candy. Enter Israeli actor Oded Fehr - of the "Resident Evil" series, "Sleeper Cell" and "The Mummy" - who is currently guest starring as Eli Cohn, a former Mossad agent helping FBI Agent Erica Evans ("Lost" vet Elizabeth Mitchell) and pals take down the scary alien Visitors. (Side note: Why do the Visitors call themselves "V's," in which the V stands for Visitor, the name we Earthicans gave them? Don't they have a name for themselves on their home world or something? Obviously we call them Visitors because they're visiting us, but...all right, whatever. To paraphrase Cher Horowitz, looking for sense in "V" is like looking for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.) Anyway, "V" has Fehr doing all sorts of wacky things, such as looking serious, frowning and having gray hair. Look, I really don't know or care what his character is there for, all I know is he's 85 times better looking than anyone else on the show, therefore he will probably die soon.   The cast of "Traffic Light" Traffic Light Last night, Fox premiered its new mid-season sitcom, "Traffic Light." The show is a remake of the Israeli series "Ramzor," which means, uh, traffic light. The show's gimmick is the traffic light metaphor. Its plot follows three best friends from college, one of whom is married with a kid (red light), one who just moved in with his girlfriend (yellow light) and one who's perpetually single (green light). "Ramzor" is a huge hit in Israel and has aired two seasons so far. In 2010 it became the first Israeli TV show to win an International Emmy Award for best comedy series. Adir Miller, who created "Ramzor" and stars in the show as the "yellow light" character, is credited as the creator and an executive producer of "Traffic Light." (Sharp-eyed viewers may also have noticed the logo for Israeli network Keshet that flashed on the screen at the end of the show.) "Traffic Light" stars American "Office" alum David Denman as the "red light," Nelson Franklin (who also had a funny bit part on the American "Office" as the IT guy) as the "yellow light" and Kris Marshall (a British actor whom you may recognize as the guy who goes to America to meet women in "Love Actually") as the "green light." The show has gotten mixed-to-negative reviews and its numbers weren't great either - the premiere got 4.59 million viewers, making it the third-least-watched show of the night on the major networks, ahead of the CW's "One Tree Hill" and "Hellcats" (is that a thing?). Still, it did better than the show it replaced, so it might make it through the season if the numbers stay around the same.   Patriots While the jury is clearly still out on "Traffic Light," American networks seem hot to remake Israeli TV shows (maybe because of the success of HBO's "In Treatment," based on the Israeli series "BeTipul"). JTA reports that Claire Danes arrived in Israel today to film scenes for her new Fox show, "Patriots," based on the Israeli show "Kidnapped." (Side note: Claire Danes coming back to TV? Yay!) According to Ynetnews, "Kidnapped" tells the story of two Israeli soldiers who survived being prisoners of war in Lebanon for 17 years. They return to Israel as part of a prisoner exchange, and the show examines their reassimilation back into society and their families. "Patriots" will follow a similar plot, except that it will be about American soldiers taken prisoner after 9/11. Danes will play a "bipolar CIA agent" who becomes suspicious of one of the returning Marines. The Arab-Israeli village of Barta'a, near Haifa, will double as an Iraqi town during filming. The show is being co-written by "Kidnapped" creater Gideon Raf and "24" executive producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. blogs 2011-02-09T22:28:57+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/60157/get-your-earplugs-ready-israel-justin-bieber-is-coming http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/60157/get-your-earplugs-ready-israel-justin-bieber-is-coming#When:19:08:08Z by rachel leibold | Justin Bieber - only slightly older-looking than my 9-month-old son. Israel, get ready for a rampaging horde of zombies in 2011. No, we're not talking about the second season of "The Walking Dead." These zombies are a little more prettified, and definitely more vocal - screaming, crying teenage girls. That's right - Justin Bieber is coming to Tel Aviv. JB will be performing at TA's Yarkon Park on April 14. A crowd of 60,000 hysterical teens is expected to attend, and the concert will reportedly cost $1.5 million to produce. The visit is somewhat notable because Israel recently "won" a contest in which fans voted on which country Beebs should add to his "My World" tour. Over the summer, the Justin Bieber My World website polled visitors on what country JB should visit next. Thanks to the...great...minds at notorious Internet forum 4chan, North Korea won the contest (and was summarily disqualified). However, Israel came in second - presumably an effort on the part of Israeli Bieber fans, and not an insinuation that Israel would be a North Korea-esque hellhole to which to send Justin Bieber. blogs 2010-12-06T19:08:08+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/59991/pink-is-pregnant-with-a-new-little-mot http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/59991/pink-is-pregnant-with-a-new-little-mot#When:23:19:50Z by rachel leibold | Pop/rock star Pink (aka Alecia Moore) is pregnant with her first child. The father is Pink's husband, motocross racer Carey Hart. Pink's mother is Jewish, which makes her little bun an official MOT. It remains to be seen if it will be a boy or girl, but Pink told Ellen DeGeneres on her show Wednesday that her mother has wished Pink a daughter just like herself - which isn't exactly a compliment, since Pink was apparently a pistol (and not in a good way) when she was a teen. True to her usually irreverent self (she proposed to her now-husband by holding up a sign asking "Will You Marry Me?" at one of his motocross events), Pink announced her pregnancy on her Twitter feed thusly: blogs 2010-11-19T23:19:50+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/59017/dont-call-obama-hitler-around-michael-ian-black http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/59017/dont-call-obama-hitler-around-michael-ian-black#When:15:15:33Z by emily savage | Warning: there’s some sassy language below, but it’s for a good cause. Yay Michael Ian Black! Thanks to the superfunny actor-comedian for calling out a bigoted heckler, mid-set, no less. Gawker reported today that when Black mentioned President Obama during his comedy routine Saturday night in Ohio, a heckler yelled “Heil Hitler.” Black was furious:  "How dare you compare Hitler to this president or any president? Do you have any idea how insulting that is?  Do you know anything about history?  Do you have any idea what Hitler did? He killed six million of my people…You're a f*** idiot, you're a f*** moron.  You're the f*** problem with this country.”The star of shows like “The State” and “Stella,” later apologized on his blog: “I feel bad because, in retrospect, that guy didn't deserve that. Yes he said something incredibly stupid, but my response was just as stupid. I could have made my point a million different ways without screaming into a microphone in a room filled with drunk people. I wasn't clever, I wasn't thoughtful, I said nothing that would move the conversation forward. I just yelled because Nazis push my Jew button.” blogs 2010-08-23T15:15:33+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58676/jews-and-baseball-an-american-love-story-hits-s.f.-jewish-film-festival http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58676/jews-and-baseball-an-american-love-story-hits-s.f.-jewish-film-festival#When:03:35:15Z by andy altman-ohr |   "Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story" has its 2nd and 3rd showings in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this weekend: Saturday, July 31 in Palo Alto and Sunday, Aug. 1 in Berkeley (see below for listings). Last weekend, the 90-minute documentary played at the Castro Theatre. I'll say this about the film; While it's not a home run or even a triple, I'd call it solid two-run single -- and well-worth taking a look at. Scholarly and informative but without a hook or much heart, the documentary travels through the 20 th century (actually, the late 1800s are included as well) and into the first decade of the 21 st century in chronological order. The focus is Jewish players and other assorted Jewish contributors to the game; it celebrates both Jews connected to baseball, and also the place baseball has had in the lives of American Jews. You'll probably learn more on those topics than you ever knew before. But you learn it in sort of a dry and factual manner, and in stereotypical documentary fashion: lots of talking heads, as much vintage footage as the filmmakers could dig up, still photos and old newspaper clippings. Standard fare. I kept thinking the whole time that this would be a great documentary on PBS. Why not take it the next level, for example, show an entire Hank Greenberg at-bat or Sandy Koufax pitching a full at-bat or even a whole inning -- rather than just the standard two-second clip? There are some great revelations: For example, I learned that Greenberg, the great Jewish Hall of Famer for the Detroit Tigers, was the general manager for the Indians when Rosen played for that team, and that the two men had a special relationship because both were Jewish. It goes unsaid, but those times Rosen spent with Greenberg might have helped lead him toward becoming a general manager himself. (Rosen, by the way, was a much better player than I ever realized, hitting 24 or more homers and driving in 100 or more runs in five straight seasons; sadly, a finger injury cut short, at age 31, what could have conceivably been a Hall of Fame career). Greenberg and Koufax are, of course, the big stars of the movie, with something like 15 to 20 minutes devoted to each one. Hank Greenberg's son gets a decent amount of screen time, and Koufax consents to a rare interview (in fact, the scenes of Koufax talking and revealing things we've never heard before are the pearls of the movie). That leaves roughly an hour for all of the other players and Jewish contributors - and there are many! One great thing about this film is that it penetrates beyond the trivial things many of us already know (Ron Blomberg was the first designated hitter in major league history; Koufax refused to pitch on Yom Kippur in the World Series; Moe Berg was a spy; etc.) and enlightens us to so much more. We even learn (too briefly, unfortunately) about a Jewish woman who played in the All-American Girls Baseball League in the 1940s. Believe me, it's worth checking out... but as a piece of filmmaking, it's not super exciting. The first third is probably the worst, so just stick with it beyond that, and you'll start finding yourself more entrenched in the topics. There are some truly corny parts, such as old New York sportswriter Maury Allen proclaiming with a twinkle in his eye that of course Jews and baseball have a unique relationship, because, well, the Bible starts, "In the Big Inning." Then there's some talking head I can't recall saying lines like "We wanted desperately to be American, and baseball was our conduit; baseball was an avenue to be part of the community." Actually, that might have been the narrator reading from his script, now that I think about it -- and I guess I should mention that the narrator is Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman. He's serviceable but dry and kind of boring; if you didn't know it was him, you might be hard-pressed to guess that it was. Not one of his best performances. The film does get off to a dazzling start, and I was cheering within seconds, thinking, "Wow! These filmmakers are on the ball! This is going to be an amazing experience." The very first thing you see on screen is the famous clip from "Airplane:" in which the stewardess asks: "Would you like something to read." Passenger: "Do you have anything light?" Stewardess: "How about this leaflet, ‘Famous Jewish Sports Legends'?" It's a leadoff home run, but the rest of the movie hits mainly singles and doubles. And that's just fine.   . . . . Here's the full lineup of screenings . . . .   Sun, July 25 2010, 1:15pmCastro Theatre Sat, July 31 2010, 2:00pmCinearts @ Palo Alto Square‎ Sun, August 1 2010, 2:15pmThe Roda Theatre (at Berkeley Repertory Theatre) Sun, August 8 2010, 2:00pmChristopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center         blogs 2010-07-22T03:35:15+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58534/web-exclusive-q-and-a-with-israeli-concert-pianist-benjamin-hochman http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58534/web-exclusive-q-and-a-with-israeli-concert-pianist-benjamin-hochman#When:21:59:53Z by stacey palevsky | Benjamin Hochman, 30, a distinguished concert pianist born and raised in Israel, makes his San Francisco Symphony debut Saturday, July 10, at Davies Symphony Hall. Hochman is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Mannes College of Music, and now makes his home in Manhattan. He has performed with orchestras and in chamber groups all over the world. He spoke to J. reporter Stacey Palevsky by phone June 25 from New York. Q: How old were you when you started playing piano?A: I was 6 years old. Q: Why piano?A: It’s a funny story. I come from a nonmusical family. My parents are academics (they both teach literature, my father at Hebrew University and my mother at Ben Gurion University). When I was a child, the woman who looked after me in the afternoons was a music teacher. She sat me down at her piano and taught me how to play some folk tunes. And she called my parents and said, “You should give him piano lessons, he has a good musical ear.” The rest is history. Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood?A: I was born and raised in Jerusalem and lived there until I was 17. It’s a wonderful place to grow up. It was a place full of music and great artists. I had wonderful teachers and also had a very rich musical life. A lot of the first experiences I had with classical music were with the Israel Philharmonic and the Jerusalem Symphony, which present music at the highest level. I had a really solid foundation when I came to the U.S. [in 1998]. Q: Have you played with any of the Israeli symphonies you grew up admiring?A: I’ve played with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israeli Philharmonic, who I played with [in 2004]. Making my Carnegie Hall debut with the Israel Philharmonic and conductor Pinchas Zukerman was very meaningful for me. Q: You’ll be playing Beethoven on July 10 with the SF Symphony. Tell me about the Emperor Concerto. What emotions does it evoke for you?A: It’s the last of the five concertos Beethoven wrote. It’s a pretty remarkable piece. It has a lot of power, a lot of grandeur. It’s a piece that places the piano in opposition to the orchestra. It’s very intense and turbulent, and at same time there’s a lot of tenderness hidden between the intensity. It’s a piece that plays with contrast. It is one of the most beloved piano concertos and for good reason — it’s a really exquisite piece of music. Q: When you appear as a soloist with a symphony, what kind of prep or practicing do you do with the symphony?A: It’s different in every case. The most usual situation is to have one or two rehearsals and that will be the case in San Francisco as well. But before I rehearse, there are years of preparation in the sense that I start learning these pieces long before I play them in concert. Most of the concertos I play in concert I learned when I was quite young — I first played Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” in my teens. So there is a process of getting to know these pieces. Q: You’ve performed all over the world. Do you ever get nervous before going on stage?A: Of course. Nerves are a natural part of what we do. Any performer who says he has no nerves is not being completely honest. Some people call it nerves, others call it adrenaline, but whatever it is it’s really the excitement that goes into making music in public. If you approach and channel this in the right way, it can contribute to a wonderful performance. Q: When you hear a piece of music or see a score, what makes you say, I want to play that?A: In a lot of cases, it’s because I’ve had an experience with the piece as a listener. I think with great music — be it Bach, Beethoven or even music written today — there’s something that speaks to you and speaks to your heart. It’s something that resonates emotionally or intellectually or somewhere in between, and you hear it and say, ‘Wow, that’s incredible, that’s amazing.’ I try to only play music like that if I can, because life is too short not to play music that’s not incredible. Q: Have you ever felt a piece of music was simply too difficult to play? How do you push through that mental hurdle?A: The music I choose to play is often very complex and inspring and it takes me a long time to feel comfortable with the music. I might be able to play it very quickly on a technical level, but I like to go deeply into the music I play because I feel I have more to say that way. If I feel stuck with a piece, it usually just means I need more time with it. For me it’s a process of uncovering layers of meaning in the music. Q: What do you miss most about Israel, and how do you stay connected to your culture living in New York City?A: I think what I miss most about Israel is a certain lifestyle, the rhythm of life there, the openness that people have toward one another. I stay connected to that by staying in touch with friends who are Israeli, whether they live in New York or in Israel, and by going there and spending time there, catching up with people I care about, going to restaurants I love, going to find best hummus in Israel, like I did last month. Q: And where is the best hummus in Israel?A: Well, that’s a very controversial subject. But in my opinion, it’s in Jaffa, at Abu Hasan. -- Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Stacey Palevsky Watch Benjamin Hochman perform Beethoven at the 92ndStreetY: blogs 2010-06-25T21:59:53+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58325/what-if-your-favorite-novelist-edited-your-newspaper-readers-of-haaretz-fin http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/58325/what-if-your-favorite-novelist-edited-your-newspaper-readers-of-haaretz-fin#When:19:28:39Z by stacey palevsky | What a cool experiment — handing over editorial duties of Ha'aretz for one day to the country's most celebrated novelists. For the second time, Ha'aretz published its special edition June 2 in honor of Israel's book week. While most of the section was planned well in advance, Ha'aretz editors scrambled at the last minute to ensure that some of the content spoke to the botched flotilla raid, which happened just two days before the Author's Edition was published. The Foward notes that it was a near complete replacement of the newspaper itself. Save for the sports section and a few other articles, all the reporters’ notebooks were handed over to poets and novelists, both bestselling and up-and-coming. Their articles filled the pages, from the leading headline to the weather report. Israeli author David Grossman spent a night at a children’s drug rehabilitation center in Jerusalem and wrote a front page story about the exchanges between the patients. Ignoring most conventional rules of journalism, he concluded the story by writing “I lay in bed and thought wondrously how, amid the alienation and indifference of the harsh Israeli reality, such islands — stubborn little bubbles of care, tenderness and humanity — still exist.” Other contributors included Etgar Keret, Jonathan Safran Foer and A.B. Yehoshua. All of the essays and stories are well-worth reading and serve as a reminder that newspapers are still alive and thrive when they push the envelope.     blogs 2010-06-07T19:28:39+00:00 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/57507/get-yourself-an-illustrated-haggadah http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/57507/get-yourself-an-illustrated-haggadah#When:23:36:21Z by stacey palevsky |   As a child, I always got antsy during the Passover seder. My dad insisted on never skimping; as a little girl, this drawn out mealtime ritual felt like an eternity to me. I'm pretty sure I snacked on matzo throughout the seder to distract me from my growling belly. One more thing helped me get through the seder. The Animated Haggadah. I loved this book. While all the other adults followed along in the dry and long Maxwell House Haggadah, I held this slim hardback book on my lap, enthralled with the claymation images. I still have the book. I still flip through it every year; for the past four years, I put it out for my seder guests to look through. The animation is just as lively as ever. And my name is still written in big block letters, first-grade chicken scratch, on the inside front cover. As I prepare for a second night seder at my house, I thought it'd be nice to reflect on the beautiful images and artwork that Passover has inspired, not least of which is the Animated Haggadah. Jewish artists began illustrating the haggadah in the Middle Ages, a practice that continues today. In honor of Passover-inspired artistic storytelling, I thought I'd dig around to see what other illustrated or artistic haggadahs are available for your reading pleasure. • ArtScroll Youth Haggadah: Contains full traditional text in large type. New translation clarifies difficult passages with clear instructions and more than 50 color illustrations by Yosef Dershowitz and Dovid Sears "that add beauty and inspiration," according to Chabad.org. A selection of comments that can be read aloud at the Seder includes comments by Rabbis Nosson and Yitzchok Zev Scherman. • The Moriah Haggadah: Created by Jerusalem artist Avner Moriah. The book contains gorgeous watercolor paintings that chronicle the entire Passover story. An English/Hebrew version is available. To view sample pages, check here. • The Open Door Haggadah: Painter Ruth Weisberg made the drawings featured in this haggadah thanks to the Jewish Artists Initiative and Hebrew Union College. Published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Weisberg's drawings explore both te Exodus from Egypt and modern day celebrations of the holiday. The drawings and monotypes, whihc highlight a feminist perspective of Passover, are currently on display through May 31 at HUC's Jewish Institte of Religion in Los Angeles. To view the haggadah, click here. • Szyk Haggadah:Features the artwork of Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), one of the leading political caricaturists in America during World War II. His Haggadah was first drawn and published during the rise of Hitler. A private art collector owns the original watercolor and gouache paintings that make up the Szyk Haggadah, and he recently partnered with rare bookseller and publisher Historicana to republish the book, complete with a new translation and commentary and an scholarly companion volume. A documentary, "In Every Generation," chronicles the remaking of the Szyk Haggadah. The entire documentary is available in seven parts on YouTube. Here is Part One.     blogs 2010-03-22T23:36:21+00:00