CHANUKAH EDITION
SECTION A PAGE 23
FALLS VILLAGE, Conn. — As a gentle snow fell on the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center last Friday evening, Nov. 30, some 85 people gathered inside a wooden lodge to welcome Shabbat — half in a meditation circle in which Grateful Dead lyrics served as a kind of mantra, the other in a more “traditional” service where the Lecha Dodi prayer was sung to the tune of the Dead classic “Ripple.”
It was the second installment of Blues for Challah, a weekend retreat that attracts dozens of Jewish Deadheads — or “grown-up hippies retracing their past,” as one participant described the scene — to this placid corner of the Connecticut countryside to bask in their collective love and reverence for the Grateful Dead.
Over the course of two days, a colorful sea of devotees — clad, unsurprisingly, in tie-dye, hemp and oversized knit yarmulkes — munched on organic food, swapped stories of their days following the Dead.
This year’s crop of entries was particularly interesting, with young artists using crayons, markers, water colors, tempera paints, fabrics, metallic materials, beads, and many more inventive media to create their impressions of Chanukah.
Entries came from towns and cities across Colorado: Denver, Aurora, Boulder, Centennial, Englewood, Evergreen, Greenwood Village, Cherry Hills Village, Highlands Ranch, Littleton, Lakewood, Westminster, Arvada, Golden, Morrison, Vail, Edwards, Avon and Ste...
“THERE’S probably no other city in the world that’s been painted so often, sung to, sculpted, dreamed about, as Jerusalem,” says Karen Brunwasser, deputy director of Jerusalem Season of Culture, an annual summer sampling of original productions spanning dance, art, music, film, live theater, literature and everything in between.
“Our obsession,” she continues, “is about the question of what happens when excellent creativity meets this wild, crazy, beautiful, complicated city calle...
SITTING down to the well-set table every November, even though it is filled with family and food, I always feel that something is missing — a Jewish connection to the Thanksgiving story.
A dinner without the drama of the Exodus, like the Passover seder, leaves me just with the turkey to send my spirits soaring.
It’s not that I need another Haggadah — I already know why this night is different: the stuffing isn’t made of matzah meal. But what about borrowing the idea of the seder’s fo...
NEW YORK — The publisher for Philip Roth confirmed that the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Jewish novelist is retiring from writing.
The Portnoy’s Complaint author, whose voice was heard as well through his alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, announced his retirement during an interview last month with the French magazine Les Inrocks. Houghton Mifflin confirmed the decision last week, according to the Forward.
Roth, 79, won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral, the National Book Award for Sab...