Judaism & Jewish Culture

With his latest CD, Ivey Divey, bandleader Don Byron pays homage to saxophonist Lester Young. Byron is a prolific musician who gets inspiration from all kinds of music. One of Byron's most-played recordings is Bug Music, heard, among other places, on NPR.

After being introduced at the age of 12 to a set of religious rules, Jennifer Traig developed a hyper-religious form of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as "scrupulosity." She chronicles her disorder in the memoir Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood.

Historian and theologian Arthur Green has long studied Jewish religion and culture. Among the many books he has written is his latest, A Guide to the Zohar.

The Zohar is a collection of writings and teaching that appeared in the 13th century. It is the basis of kabbalah, a mystical extension of Judaism identified with alphanumeric codes and esoteric symbols. Green's Guide to the Zohar is an overview of modern studies of kabbalah's medieval origins.

The 82-year-old historian and rabbi has been at the center of events that shape American Jewish life for more than 50 years. He is the former president of the American Jewish Congress, and helped to found the movement called Peace Now in Israel. His 1959 book, The Zionist Idea, is considered a classic. Last year he wrote his memoir A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity. His new book is The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future for Israel and Palestine.

His new book Brundibar is based on a Czech opera of the same name. It was set to music by Hans Krasa, who was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin and later killed in Auschwitz. The opera was performed 55 times by the children of Terezin. Sendak has also written and illustrated the classic children's books Where the Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen and Outside Over There. Time magazine has said, "For Sendak, visiting the land of the very young is not something that requires a visa.

Eitan Gorlin's latest film, The Holy Land, won the Grand Jury Best Feature Film prize at the 2002 Slamdance Film Festival. It's a love story, loosely based on his novella Mike's Place, A Jerusalem Diary, and his experiences as a bartender at Mike's Place, a popular bar on the Tel Aviv waterfront where Jews, Muslims, internationals, atheists and devouts congregate. Since the making of the film, Mike's Place was the site of a suicide bombing.

Writer Neil Baldwin is the author of the new book, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass roduction of Hate (PublicAffairs books). Baldwin details Ford early obsession with moralistic writings condemning Jews for not accepting Christ. Shortly before World War I and continuing into the 1930s he wrote a series of venomous anti-semitic essays in the newspaper, The Dearborn Independent (which Ford owned). In 1928 he collected many of the essays published in 1920 under the title, The International Jew: The World Foremost Problem. He also published The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

David Edelstein reviews The Pianist.

Czech writer Arnost Lustig is considered one of the country's most prominent writers. His new novel, Lovely Green Eyes, is the story of a 15-year-old girl in Auschwitz and the compromises she makes in order to stay alive. Lustig himself survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps. His family died in the gas chambers. Lustig teaches at American University in Washington, D.C. He is also featured in the new documentary Fighter, in which he and long-time friend Jan Wiener retrace wartime memories.

Novelist Chaim Potok died Tuesday at the age of 73. Potok was raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, was ordained as a rabbi, and later became a best-selling author of the novels The Chosen, The Promise and My Name is Asher Lev. Much of his writing explored the conflict between spiritual and secular worlds, a subject that earned him readers from all faiths. This interview first aired in 1986.

David Kertzer is the author of The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (Knopf). In the book he focuses on the time period from Napoleon to Hitler, and how "traditional" Catholic forms of dealing with Jews became transformed into modern anti-Semitism. Kertzer is Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and a professor of anthropology and Italian Studies at Brown University.

Host of NPR's Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan. During the summer of 2000, he took a hiatus from his duties at NPR to follow the fortunes of the Aberdeen Arsenal, a minor league baseball team. Conan pursued a lifelong dream: to become a baseball announcer. He writes about it in his new book: Play by Play: Baseball, Radio and Life in the Last Chance League (Crown Publishers).

Actor, writer, comedian Andy Richter. For seven years he was Conan O'Brien's sidekick on Late Night. Now he has his own sitcom on FOX, Andy Richter Controls the Universe. Richter could be seen in the movies, Scary Movie 2, Dr. T & The Women, Big Trouble and Run, Ronnie, Run.

His new book, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis is the second volume of his biography of Hitler. It has been nominated for the Whitbread Prize. The first volume, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris was an editors choice of the New York Times and is now available in paperback. Kershaw is a professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield.

Ruth Kluger is the author of the new memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (The Feminist Press). Kluger was ten years old when she and her mother were deported to the Jewish "ghetto" Theresienstadt. From there they were sent to Auschwitz and the young Kluger survived to go to the work camp Christianstadt by lying about her age. Her memoir, Still Alive, was published in Germany in 1992 and has just been published in the U.S. Kluger became a distinguished professor of German and is professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine.

Biblical theologian Rabbi Burton Visotzky teaches at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. He's best known for his Genesis seminars, attended by novelists, poets, editors, filmmakers, CEOs, and attorneys to understand the relevance of Genesis to modern life. It became the basis of a 10-part PBS series in 1996. He is also the author of The Road To Redemption: Lessons from Exodus on Leadership and Community.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Dying Animal by Philip Roth.

Cantor Philip Sherman is a mohel who performs the Jewish rite of circumcision on the eighth day of a baby boys life. In his twenty-two year career hes performed about nine thousand. His grandfather was also a mohel.

Writer Samuel Freedman. He’s just written a book about the state of the American Jewish Community called “Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the soul of American Jewry." (Simon & Schuster) Freedman believes that three fundamental questions are rending the American Jewish community today: "What is the definition of Jewish identity? Who decides what is authentic and legitimate Judaism? And what is the Jewish compact with America?" We talk with Freedman following the recent nomination of the first Jewish vice presidential candidate, Democrat Joe Lieberman.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg takes a look at the trouble the media had trying to find the words to describe vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman.