As the walls of flame approached her Santa Rosa home, Melanie Carlston frantically grabbed her mother’s paintings off the walls. She tossed a couple of dozen of them into a box she took with her as she fled, hopeful the artwork left behind would survive. It didn’t. More than a year after the Sonoma County…
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Culture
Film
East Bay Jewish film fest picks 'not always obvious'
The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival brings all the sophistication of global film programming to the comfort of modern cineplexes. The March…
Culture
How immigrants' 'Memory Objects' survived
Refugees persecuted for their religion often carry with them, from country to country, continent to continent, those cherished possessions that have…
Celebrity Jews
The Tribe goes to the Oscars, 2019
The 91st Academy Awards will be on ABC at 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24. Here are the confirmed Jewish nominees, and other interesting tidbits, in all but the…
Film
‘Redemption’ lies between rock (’n’ roll) and a hard place
It’s easy to imagine a Hollywood remake of “Redemption,” an unexpected Israeli drama about a 40-something widower who reunites his old rock band in order…
Books
Survivor, memoirist shares her story at JCC East Bay
Sylvia Ruth Gutmann, who at age 3 lost her parents to the Holocaust and survived the war as a hidden child, has chosen to spin her losses into a…
Books
How black U.S. basketball players became Israel’s biggest fans
They aren’t soldiers or scientists. They aren’t part of the startup nation. They don’t win Eurovision song contests. In fact, they are quite an unlikely…
Film
Personal reinvention goes tragically awry in ‘A Fortunate Man’
You never hear the expression “self-hating Christian.” But it fits Peter like his favorite three-piece Italian suit. The stifled son of an inflexible…
Film
Film pays tribute to moviemaking pioneer and wartime rescuer
We take the movies for granted. Get on line, buy a ticket, watch the flick and go home. But once upon a time, there was no movie business. Someone had to…