DAVID

www.davidlv.com SEPTEMBER 2012

Shofar so Good Why Levitan Blows at Blowing the Ram’s Horn

Dybbuk in the Box A Jewish Demon Stars in the New Movie, The Possession

Kosher Brain Freeze Anyone for Chocolate Gelt, Matzoh Toffee or Rugelach Ice Cream

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5773

No Matter What Calendar You Use, Have a Healthy and Happy New Year.

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In Celebration of

Rosh hashanah Cream Herring White Fish Tzimmes Roast Beef Brisket Baked Kugel

Salmon with Honey BBQ Sauce & Walnuts Challah Bread Sliced Apples with Honey Baked Chicken with Dried Fruit

These specialties will be served in addition to our regular buffet at these meal periods.

Dinner on Sunday, September 16 Dinner on Monday, September 17

Alta & Rampart

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Las Vegas Design Center is home to the city’s most comprehensive selection of home furnishings and interior design resources.

LOCATED AT WORLD MARKET CENTER LAS VEGAS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY, 10AM TO 5PM AND SATURDAY, 10AM TO 3PM COMPLIMENTARY VALET PARKING · LVDESIGNCENTER.COM

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September

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pulse

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explore The month’s event listings to help plan your day or your stay

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devour Where to find some of the best eats, drinks and foodie happenings in the Valley

Ice Cream’s Jewish Innovators The pioneers of the premium ice cream craze for 40 years, from Haagen-Dazs to Ben & Jerry’s and beyond.

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speak Local humorist, Corey Levitan takes shofar lessons before his gig at Temple during the Jewish High Holy Days

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know Keyboard virtuoso Mona Golabek channels her mother, pianist Lisa Jura in her remarkable performance in The Pianist of Willesden Lane

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Dybbuk in the Box A Jewish demon stars in Lionsgate’s fall release The Possession.

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A Calendar Conundrum Why do the Jews have 5773, what’s wrong with 2012.

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taste Baking has always been a passion for this French trained pastery chef. Paula Shoyer’s new tome The Kosher Baker makes it easy for us neophytes, Jewish or not to entertain with style.

www.davidlv.com SEPTEMBER 2012

on the cover For a sweet year, apples and honey grace the Rosh Hashanah table. That is why they are on our cover and in so many Jewish New Year ads.

Copyright 2012 by JewishINK LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. DAVID MAGAZINE is protected as a trademark in the United States. Subscribers: If the Postal Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we are under no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year.

The publisher accepts no responsibility for unsolicited or contributed manuscripts, photographs, artwork or advertisements.

Submissions will not be returned unless arranged for in writing. DAVID MAGAZINE is a monthly publication. All information regarding editorial content or property for sale is deemed reliable. No representation is made as to the accuracy hereof and is printed subject to errors and omissions.

Shofar so Good

5773

Why Levitan Blows at Blowing the Ram’s Horn

www.davidlv.com

discover Places to go, cool things to do, hip people to see in the most exciting city in the World daven Candle Lighting times and synagogue information. mingle Snapshots of the latest, greatest events

SEPTEMBER 2012

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desire Sin City abounds in world-class shopping ... these are a few of our favorite things

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Shawn Green, Retired Major League Baseball Player The month’s spotlight on a person of interest

Dybbuk in the Box A Jewish Demon Stars in the New Movie, The Possession

Kosher Brain Freeze Anyone for Chocolate Gelt, Matzoh Toffee or Rugelach Ice Cream

No Matter What Calendar You Use, Have a Healthy and Happy New Year.

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WICKED HAS LANDED IN LAS VEGAS.

NOW THRU OCTOBER 7 THE SmiTH CENTER fOR THE PERfORmiNG ARTS The Smith Center Box Office TheSmithCenter.com or call 702-749-2000

wickedthemusical.com • Grammy® Award-Winning Cast Recording available on Decca Broadway

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Max Friedland

max@davidlv.com editor@davidlv.com

Joanne Friedland joanne@davidlv.com

EDITORIALllllllll

Editorial Assistant

Brianna Soloski

Copy Editor

Pat Teague

Jeremy Leopold a

Contributing Writers

brianna@davidlv.com

Allison Calhoun David Scott Cohen Marisa Finetti Jaq Greenspon Corey Levitan Pat Teague Lynn Wexler-Margolies

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

Art Director/ Photographer

Steven Wilson

steve@davidlv.com

ADVERTISING & MARKETING

Advertising Director

Joanne Friedland joanne@davidlv.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS 702-254-2223 | subscribe@davidlv.com

Volume 03 Number05 www.davidlv.com DAVID Magazine is published 12 times a year.

Copyright 2012 by JewishINK LLC. 1930 Village Center Circle, No. 3-459 Las Vegas, NV 89134 (p) 702-254-2223 (f) 702-664-2633

To advertise in DAVID Magazine, call 702-254-2223 or email ads@davidlv.com To subscribe to DAVID Magazine, call 702.254-2223 or email subscibe@davidlv.com

DAVID Magazine sets high standards to ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable manner. This copy of DAVID Magazine was printed by American Web in Denver, Colo., on paper from well-managed forests which meet EPA guidelines that recommend use of recovered fibers for coated papers. Inks used contain a blend of soy base. Our printer meets or exceeds all federal Resource Conservation Recovery Act standards and is a certified member of both the Forest Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. When you are done with this issue, please pass it on to a friend or recycle it.

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Brittany Rulis Photography

Sher Fertility Institute Las Vegas

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contributors

Allison Calhoun is a writer, actress, and director who lives in Los Angeles, California.

Having recently finished her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University she is now continuing her studies at UCLA. Allison spent the majority of her life in Tennessee and New York where she grew up and where her family still lives.

David Scott Cohen is a veteran radio reporter in Atlanta and the play-by-play voice for Georgia State University sports. In 2010 he published his first book, Matzoh Balls and Baseballs. He writes for INsite Magazine, Atlanta.

Marisa Finetti is a local writer, marketing professional and blogger. The Tokyoborn Finetti has called Las Vegas home since 2005.

She has written for such publications as Spirit and Las Vegas and Nevada magazines and has a healthy-living blog at bestbewell.com.

When she’s not writing, Finetti enjoys family time with her husband and two boys.

Jaq Greenspon is a noted local journalist, screenwriter and author with credits on The New Adventures of Robin Hood and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He also is a literary and movie critic, has taught and written about fi lmmaking but is most proud of his role in the fi lm, Lotto Love. A Vegas resident for most of his life, his native language is Hebrew, but he doesn’t speak it anymore.

Corey Levitan is a local journalist who was laid off four months before the Nevada Press Association named his “Fear and Loafing” series the Best Local Column of 2011. He is now a freelance writer, a new dad and a pauper. With unexpected time on his hands he has become a three-time NASCAR champion, an avid shrunken head collector and is now in training to become the first eunuch in space.

Pat Teague has been a practicing journalist, manager and editor for international and regional wire services, and has worked for several metropolitan daily newspapers. He also has worked for one of the world’s largest corporations and was one of five Southern Californians in the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists honored in 2000 for career achievement.

Lynn WexlerMargolies has been a feature writer and contributor for magazines and newspapers, locally and nationally, for over 20 years. She writes a monthly online column entitled Manners in the News, which comments on the behavior of politicians, celebrities and others thrust in the public arena.

She is the Founder and President of Perfectly Poised, a school of manners that teaches social, personal and business etiquette to young people.

She is a former TV Reporter and News Anchor. Of her many accomplishments, she is most proud of her three outstanding teenaged children.

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from the publisher Often we struggle with a project, thinking we have complete creative control, only to find upon completion the evidence of another hand involved. Without trying to sound too esoteric, let me explain.

DAVID Magazine was completed this month with lots of time to spare. In the publishing world this rarely occurs; production usually happens right up to the final extended deadline.

This is not always a blessing.

With the luxury of extra time the game of second-guessing decisions becomes possible. Should we have used this piece of art or another? Should we have tweaked this headline? Does the slice of apple in the cover photograph look fresh enough? With all the tools at an art director’s disposal, an apple can literally morph into an orange. The great masters understood that one has to step back from the canvas eventually and put the brushes down.

Review of the table of contents of this month’s magazine raises legitimate questions. What do the collection of articles have to do with each other, and more specifically with the Jewish High Holy Days we celebrate this month? Our editorial calendar clearly promises this focus. What do a horror movie, ice cream manufacturers, a musician/thespian, a pastry chef and an academic study of the history of calendars have to do with Rosh Hashanah? In this view, only Corey Levitan’s desire to make some noise during the High Holy Days services connects us with the theme.

Late Grandpa Joe often chastised me: “Don’t jump to conclusions, Max. Look a little deeper; sometimes things are not as they appear.”

A metaphysician he was not, rather a down-to-earth practical man who would fix appliances with pieces of sawn-off broom handle. Joe would be proud of my current deliberations.

With the abundance of extra time, I revisited the editorial content of this month’s publication and found him correct as usual. By design or otherwise, the stories referenced in the table of contents are a perfect fit for the holidays. The key to this realization unexpectedly comes from Jaq Greenspon’s piece The Dybbek in the Box. Upon consideration of the subject matter of the movie he previews, I realized we all are, in fact, “boxes” – containing elements of good and evil. The state of the world today amply evidences this reality. Keeping our inner demons in check defines our humanity, especially at this auspicious time of year. The individuals profiled in this month’s DAVID all appeal to their higher angels and live creative, inspired and loving lives. What a perfect example of the imperative to live a good life. Following their example is a perfect New Year’s resolution.

Let us take down the old calendar, thankful for all that cycle provided, and put up a new one for the year 5773. Take a moment to stand in awe of this virgin document and contemplate all the potential it heralds.

L’Shanah Tova Tikatevu. May you be inscribed in the book of life for a good year.

Max Friedland max@davidlv.com 10 DAVID ELUL 5772/TISHREI 5773

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ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Renowned music director Zubin Mehta and pianist Yuja Wang will lead the orchestra in a delightful performance including the works of Schubert, Chopin and Brahms.

OCTOBER 29 AT 7:30PM TICKETS STARTING AT $39

For tickets, please visit TheSmithCenter.com or call 702.749.2000.

361 Symphony Park Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89106

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pulse INSIDE explore @ 14 devour @ 19 desire @ 20 discover @ 22

Ashton Zyer, 9.22, pg. 17

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SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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eXplore L A S

V E G A S

Earl TurnEr: Through Sept. 2, 7:30 p.m., $15.95. Suncoast Showroom, 9090 Alta Drive, Las Vegas. 702-636-7075. suncoastcasino.com lush by Chris baudEr Through Sept.

29, Tues.-Sat. 12-6 p.m., free. Brett Wesley Gallery, 1112 S. Casino Center Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-433-4433. brettwesleygallery.com nEil diamond: 8 p.m., $58.05-$152.45.

MGM Grand Garden Arena, 3799 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-891-3001. mgmgrand.com WiCkEd: Through Oct. 7, 7:30 & 2 p.m., $42-$186. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2000. thesmithcenter.com moods in Color by riTa sTEffEn: Through Sept. 9, free. Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-5073400. lvccld.org TEEn sCholarship arT ExhibiT: Through Sept. 13, free. Moapa Valley Library, 350 N. Moapa Valley Blvd., Las Vegas. 702397-2690. lvccld.org rE-CyClEd mETal arT sCulpTurEs by davE Thompson: Through Sept. 16, free.

West Las Vegas Library, 951 W. Lake Mead Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-507-3980. lvccld.org Clark CounTy arT Guild mEmbErs shoW: Through Oct. 2, free. Rainbow Library, 3150 N. Buffalo Drive, Las Vegas.

702-507-3980. lvccld.org

janE’s addiCTion: 9 p.m., $50. Boulevard Pool at Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

September 1 hElp of souThErn nEvada sChool supply drivE: Through Sept. 13. Bring school supplies to the HELP of Southern Nevada office to help outfit Clark County children with the necessary supplies. HELP of Southern Nevada, 1640 East Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-369-4357. helpsonv.org Tony bEnnETT: 7:30 p.m., $59.50-$196.

Colosseum at Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd.

S., Las Vegas. 702-731-7266. caesarspalace.com ron WhiTE: Through Sept. 2, 10 p.m., $59.99-$79.99. The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-792-7777. mirage.com vEGas vallEy book fEsTival prEfEsTival EvEnT - CrysTal bookmark aWard nominaTions: Through Sept. 21, free. For more information or to submit a nomination, call 702-229-5431. vegasvalleybookfestival.org

vEGas vallEy book fEsTival prE-fEsTival EvEnT - “CrEaTE an arTisT’s skETChbook”: Through Sept. 2, 11 a.m. & 1 p.m., free-$10. Las Vegas Natural History Museum, 900 Las Vegas Blvd. N., Las Vegas. 702-384-3466. vegasvalleybookfestival.org “CElEbraTinG lifE! 2012 WinnErs CirClE”: Through Sept. 6, free, Mon.-Thurs.

7 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Las Vegas City Hall Chamber Gallery, 495 S. Main Street, second floor. 702229-1012. artslasvegas.org

rEnE haGEdorn phoToGraphy: Through Sept. 18, free. Spring Valley Library, 4280 S. Jones Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-507-3820. lvccld.org drEam a liTTlE drEam by ThE vEGas arTisTs Guild: Through Sept. 4, free.

Sunrise Library, 5400 Harris Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-507-3900. lvccld.org las vEGas nEWs burEau phoToGraphs: Through Sept. 23, free.

Centennial Hills Library, 6711 N. Buffalo Drive, Las Vegas. 702-507-6100. lvccld.org CrEaTEd aT poTTEry WEsT: Through Sept. 25, free. Sahara West Library, 9600 West Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-507-3630. lvccld.org

“nEoThTa” (youTh): Through Oct. 27, free. Historic Fifth Street School Mayor’s Gallery, 401 S. 4th Street. 702-229-1012. artslasvegas.org

6Th annual divErsiTy in Clay: Through Sept. 13, free. Windmill Library, 7060 Windmill Lane, Las Vegas. 702-5076030. lvccld.org

“objECT illusion”: Through Nov. 15, free, Mon.-Thurs. 7 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Las Vegas City Hall Terrace Gallery, 495 S. Main Street, Second floor. 702-229-1012. artslasvegas.org

off ThE sTrip nEW GEnrE fEsTival: Through Sept. 2, $10-$15. Contemporary Arts Center, 107 E. Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas.

702-382-3886. lasvegascac.org

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Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com Jay leno: 10 p.m., $59.99-$79.99. Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd., S., Las Vegas. 702-7927777. mirage.com gotye, witH cHairlift & Jonti: 8 p.m., $100-$329. House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-6327600. houseofblues.com/lasvegas “MountainS and valleyS witHou” end: Through Nov. 21, free, Weds.-Fri. 12:30-9 p.m. & Sat. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Charleston Heights Art Center, 800 S Brush Street. 702229-6383. artslasvegas.org gary allan: 8 p.m., $25-$75. Sunset Station, 1301 W. Sunset Road, Henderson.

702-547-7982. sunsetstation.sclv.com Earl Turner, 9.1 & 2

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Sugarland 9 p.m., $84.60. Mandalay Bay Beach, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas.

702-632-6132. mandalaybay.com

HarveSt feStival original art & craft SHow: Through Sept. 9, Fri.-Sat 10 a.m.-6 p.m. & Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., $4-$9.

Cashman Center, 850 N. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. harvestfestival.com

Second annual “delivering Magic” Book drive: Through Sept. 18.

Book donations will benefit local elementary schools. winderfarms.com

little Hurricane: 9 p.m., $20.

Boulevard Pool at Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com Margaret cHo: 10 p.m., $49.99-$69.99.

The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-791-7111. mirage.com Super SuMMer tHeatre: leader of tHe pack: Through Sept. 22, 7 p.m., $12-$20. Spring Mountain Ranch, Highway 159, Blue Diamond. 702-594-7529. supersummertheatre.org city ligHtS MuSic togetHer: Through Sept. 12. Times, dates, & locations vary. For more information, call Melanie Ron at 702838-4751. citylightsmusictogether.com

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cHicago: Through Sept. 8, 8:30 p.m., $59$99. LVH, 3000 Paradise Road, Las Vegas.

702-732-5111. thelvh.com

Mary J Blige & d'angelo: 8 p.m., $99.

Pearl at the Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-944-3200. palms.com farM to Strip dinnerS: 6 p.m., $48.

First Food & Bar, 3327 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-607-3478. firstfoodandbar.com Jane'S addiction: 9 p.m., $50.

Boulevard Pool at Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las

firSt friday: 6-10 p.m., free. Various downtown locations. firstfridaylasvegas.org

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candleligHterS 5k & one Mile “race for our kidS” witH cHet BucHanan: 8 a.m., $25-$40.

Exploration Park at Mountains Edge, 9275 S. Buffalo Drive, Las Vegas. 702-737-1919. candlelightersnv.org katHy griffin: 10 p.m., $59.99-$79.99.

The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-792-7777. mirage.com an evening of pop & doo wop: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Sam's Town Hotel & Gambling Hall, 5111 Boulder Highway, Las Vegas. 702284-7777. samstownlv.com Social Media filM feStival Through Sept. 9, $10-$30, times vary. The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-5018140. socialmediafilmfestival.com

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norM Macdonald: Through Aug. 11, 8 p.m., $34.95. Orleans Showroom, 4500 West Tropicana, Las Vegas. 702-365-7111. orleanscasino.com

Shana Tova Celebrate with holiday specialties from Bagel Cafe 301 N. Buffalo Drive 255-3444 www.thebagelcafelv.com

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vegaS valley Book feStival pre-feStival event - “SMart

WhereTheLocalsEat.com

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Theater, 3920 Schiff Drive, Las Vegas. 702362-7996. lvlt.org PonCho sAnChez & his LAtin bAnD: Through Sept. 15, 7 & 9:30 p.m., $39-$48. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2000. thesmithcenter.com

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vegAs vALLey booK festivAL PrefestivAL event - “the first LADy of LAs vegAs”: 12 p.m., $1. Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park, 500 E. Washington Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-4863511. vegasvalleybookfestival.org

Wayne Brady, 9.15

ChiC’s KiCK it tour”: 7 p.m., free.

Reed Whipple Cultural Center, 821 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-229-5431. vegasvalleybookfestival.org

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Art & Wine: A PerfeCt PAiring: 5 p.m., $30-$38. Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-693-7871. bellagio.com

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the hives: 9 p.m., $20. Boulevard Pool at the Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

“AbsoLutLy AbstrACt”: Through Nov. 17, free, Weds.-Fri. 9 a.m.-7 p.m. & Sat. 8 a.m.-6 p.m. West Las Vegas Arts Center Community Gallery, 947 W. Lake Mead Blvd. (702) 2294800. artslasvegas.org WAyne brADy: 9 p.m., $39.99-$59.99. The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas.

702-792-7777. mirage.com 11th AnnuAL storybooK gALA: To benefit Spread the Word Nevada. 5:30 p.m., $250. Venetian Hotel & Casino, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-564-7809. spreadthewordnevada.org girL sCout 100th birthDAy bAsh: 9 a.m., free. Cashman Center, 850 N. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-385-3677. girlscoutsnv.org fionA APPLe: 8 p.m., $25.50-$91. The Joint at the Hard Rock, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-693-5000. thejointlasvegas.com

Luis MigueL: Through Sept. 15, 9 p.m., $95$250. The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-731-7226. caesarspalace.com

roCK 'n roLL Wine's 7th AnnuAL Wine AMPLifieD festivAL: 7 p.m., $72.35.

Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-632-7200. mandalaybay.com

hisPAniC-AMeriCAn heritAge exhibit: Through Oct. 11, free, Mon.-Thurs. 7 a.m.5:30 p.m. Las Vegas City Hall Chamber Gallery, 495 S. Main Street, Second floor. 702229-1012. artslasvegas.org

Arturo sAnDovAL: Through Sept. 16, 8 p.m., $19.95. Orleans Showroom, 4500

estebAn: 7 p.m., $35-$59. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702749-2000. thesmithcenter.com

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CArLos MenCiA: 9 p.m., $49. Treasure Island, 3300 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas.

702-894-7722. treasureisland.com shAfer Wine Dinner: 6:30 p.m., $195.

Bellagio, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas.

702-693-7075. bellagio.com siDeMAn by WArren Leight: Through Sept. 30, 8 & 2 p.m., $21-$24. Las Vegas Little

Mary J. Blige, 9.7

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PRELUDE TO THE ALLEGRO INTERNATIONAL GUITAR COMPETITION: 8 p.m., $35-$75. UNLV Performing Arts, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy., Las Vegas. 702-895-2787. pac.unlv.edu DOWNTOWN CULTURAL SERIES - THE SWEET POTATOES: 12 p.m., free. Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse, Jury Assembly Room, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702229-3515. artslasvegas.org

MATISYAHU: 8 p.m., $35. Hard Rock Hotel, 4455 Paradise Road, Las Vegas. 702-6935000. hardrockhotel.com

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ESTEBAN: 7 p.m., $35-$59. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702749-2000. thesmithcenter.com

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RYAN LESLIE: 9 p.m., $20. Boulevard Pool at Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas. com STONE TEMPLE PILOTS: 8 p.m., $88-$275.

Pearl at the Palms, 4321 W. Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-944-3200. palms.com

IHEART RADIO MUSIC FESTIVAL: Through Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m., $82.40-$664.15. MGM Grand Garden, 3799 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-891-3001. mgmgrand.com

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VEGAS WINE AND FOOD FESTIVAL: 8 p.m., $35-$75. Red Rock Hotel & Casino, 11011 W. Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas. vegaswineandfood.com SUNSET RUN TO BENEFIT CHRON'S AND COLITIS: 6:38 p.m., $25-$40. Kellogg-Zaher Park, 7701 West Washington, Las Vegas. sunsetrocknrun.com ASHTON ZYER - TAKIN' OVER ME: 8 p.m., $26-$35. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-749-2000. thesmithcenter.com

the nutcracker

the joffrey ballet

new york city ballet moves

Photo by Herbert Migdoll

romeo & juliet

Photo by Virginia Trudeau

CELEBRATE DEBUSSY'S 150TH: 7:30 p.m., $25. UNLV Performing Arts, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy., Las Vegas. 702-895-2787. pac.unlv.edu

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RAY ROMANO & KEVIN JAMES: 10 p.m., $99.99-$120.99. The Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-792-7777. mirage. com

the studio series

Subscribe Today

GARTH BROOKS: Through Sept. 22, 7:30 & 10:30 p.m., $225. Wynn Las Vegas, 3131 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-770-7000. wynnlasvegas.com SWING FOR THE KIDS CELEBRITY GOLF TOURNAMENT: 7:30 a.m., $30$2500. Mountain Falls Golf Club, 5001 Clubhouse Drive, Pahrump. 702-262-0037. positivelykids.org

jewels

Photo by Paul Kolnik

Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-365-7075. orleanscasino.com

Photo by Jeff Speer

Arturo Sandoval, 9.15 & 16

40TH ANNUAL LAS VEGAS GREEK FESTIVAL: Through Sept. 23, times vary, $7.

St. John Greek Orthodox Church, 5300 South El Camino Road, Las Vegas. 702-221-8245. lasvegasgreekfestival.com

Photo by Jerry Metellus

LUKE BRYAN: 7 p.m., $29-$79. Red Rock Resort, 11011 W. Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas.

702-797-7777. redrock.sclv.com

2012-2013 Premiere Season at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts

702.749.2000 or

visit NevadaBallet.org Ray Romano & Kevin James, 9.21

Rubies Choreography by George Balanchine Š The George Balanchine Trust

SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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Members Wanted

Your Family. Your Home.

Rabbi Malcolm Cohen

Cantor Mariana Gindlin

Esteban, 9.13

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SERVICE

S’lichot Program

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah – Morning

Rosh Hashanah – Children’s Service

Rosh Hashanah – Tashlich

Yom Kippur - Morning

Yom Kippur – Kol Nidre

Yom Kippur - Study Session

Yom Kippur – Afternoon

Yom Kippur – Children’s Service

Yom Kippur – Neilah

Yom Kippur – Yizkor

ICE CREAM SUNDAY AT PROMENADE PARK: 11 a.m., free. Promenade Park at Providence, 7051 N. Hualapai way, Las Vegas.

702-222-2362. spreadthewordnevada.org CARDS FOR KIDS UNDER THE STARS CASINO NIGHT: 6 p.m., free. Rumor ~ The Las Vegas Boutique Hotel, 455 E. Harmon Avenue, Las Vegas. 702-967-3522. chfn.org

26 DAY/TIME

Saturday, Sept. 8

Sunday, Sept. 17

Saturday, Sept. 16

Sunday, Sept. 17

Sunday, Sept. 17

Tuesday, Sept. 25

Wednesday, Sept. 26

Wednesday, Sept. 26

Wednesday, Sept. 26

Wednesday, Sept. 26

Wednesday, Sept.26

Wednesday, Sept. 26

VEGAS VALLEY BOOK FESTIVAL PREFESTIVAL EVENT: CHERYL STRAYED: 7 p.m., free. Clark County Library, 1401 Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-507-6281. lvccld.org

27 SERVICE TIMES

7:30pm

7:30 pm

10:00 am

2:00 pm

3:30 pm

7:30 pm

10:00 am

1:00 pm

3:15 pm

2:15 pm

4:30 pm

5:15 pm

Shabbat Worship

Friday evenings at 7:30pm Saturday mornings at 10:00am Got Kids?

1st Friday Tot Shabbat 6:15pm 3rd Friday Family Shabbat 6:15pm 9001 Hillpointe Road, Las Vegas, NV 89134

702-254-5110 www.TempleSinaiLV.org Temple Sinai a Reform Congregation in Summerlin Member

BARCELONA: 9 p.m., $20. Boulevard Pool at Cosmopolitan, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-698-7000. cosmopolitanlasvegas.com

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DANIEL TOSH: Through Sept. 29, 10 p.m., $59.99-$79.99. Mirage, 3400 Las Vegas Blvd.

S., Las Vegas. 702-792-7777. mirage.com THE SECOND CITY TOURING COMPANY: 8 p.m., $30-$55. UNLV Performing Arts, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy., Las Vegas. 702-895-2787. pac.unlv.edu BILL COSBY: 8 p.m., $59. Treasure Island, 3300 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-8947722. treasureisland.com MY MOTHER'S ITALIAN, MY FATHER'S

JEWISH, & I'M IN THERAPY: Through Sept.

30, times vary, $32-$42. The Smith Center, 361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas. 702749-2000. thesmithcenter.com

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65 ROSES CULINARY EVENT: 6 p.m., $50.

Stan Fulton Building, 801 East Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. 702-383-8500. cff.org THIS ONE’S FOR THE BOYS!) 2 MILE WALK & 3 MILE RUN" To benefit 21st Century CARE Foundation. $25-$30.

UNLV, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas.

For more information or to register, visit 21stcenturycare.org COMMUNITY ARTIST SERIES: MOH”MMED-RAFEE SHAKIR “SHAMANIC SYNTAX): 3 p.m., free. West Las Vegas Arts Center Community Gallery, 947 W. Lake Mead Blvd. 702-229-4800. artslasvegas.org THE PURE HOUSE MUSIC FESTIVAL WEEKEND: 10 a.m., $20-$45. Clark County Ampitheater, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway, Las Vegas. 702-455-4323. purehousemusicfestival.com

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JUSTIN BIEBER: 7 p.m., $46.05-$100.65.

MGM Grand Garden Arena, 3799 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas. 702-891-3001. mgmgrand.com

To submit your event information, email calendar@ davidlv.com by the 15th of the month prior to the month in which the event is being held.

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8/21/12 11:07 AM

devour The Babka In the world of delicious Jewish home baked fare, Babka reigns supreme. Often considered the ultimate comfort food, it was probably baked by your bubbe for special occasions like the breaking of the fast after Yom Kippur. Originating as a traditional Christian cakebread in Romania and Poland, the recipe made its way into Jewish people of Eastern Europe’s cuisine. This spongy concoction is usually filled with raisins and topped with a sweet, fruity glaze.

Other popular versions are often filled with cinnamon and raisins or chocolate, occasionally topped with a cream cheese frosting. For Paula Shoyer’s recipe, please visit our website at davidlv.com

Tetsu Tetsu means iron in Japanese, which is why the Iron Chef is referred to as such. It means the chef cannot be beat, that nobody can top what the chef comes up with. This uncompromising style is embodied at Tetsu, under the direction of Master Chef Masa Takayama and his group of handpicked chefs. The restaurant features four blackjack style tables and two communal tables, with a produce table serving as the center of the restaurant. This format allows guests to have a uniquely personalized dining experience.

Seafood, meat, and vegetable dishes are designed to show the true flavors of Japan. Included are Toro Tartare with Caviar, Herbed Chicken Thigh, and Foie Gras. Rounding out the menu are a number of refreshing desserts, including Truffle Ice Cream and Grapefruit Granite. Tetsu at Aria, 3730 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. Weds.-Sun. 5-11 p.m. 702-590-7111. arialasvegas.com

DAVID’s Apple & Honey Martini Make this tipple in gallon quantities. Family and friends (age warning here) will be sure to get a kick out of the l’chaims. Enjoy but remember to give the keys to the designated driver.

This recipe is for a single serving: 1 cup ice 1 1⁄2 oz. Esme Vodka 1⁄2 oz. Mr. Stacks Sour Apple Schnapps 1 tsp. fresh lime juice 1⁄2 oz. simple syrup 1 tsp. honey Wedges of apple (dipped in lemon juice to prevent browning) Ice up the cocktail shaker. Add vodka, schnapps, lime juice and simple syrup. Drizzle a the teaspoon of honey into the mixture.

Add a small quantity of honey to the bottom of the glass. Shake or stir until combined. Strain into your favorite martini glass. Before drinking, if you can, garnish with the apple wedges.

SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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desire

September Shoes Get grounded during fall’s flowing silhouettes just got easier with these vintageinspired turn-of-the century peddler-esque ankle boot by Rag & Bone. $495. Barneys New York at Shoppes at the Palazzo, 3327 S. Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-629-4200.

The extraordinary ‘Zelda’ is a head-turning court shoe with ‘trompe l’oeil’ zebra detail, standing tall on a signature platform featuring a standout feather pom-pom detail. $1,475 Neiman Marcus at Fashion Show, 3200 Las Vegas Blvd. S. Las Vegas. 702-731-3636.

Dominate the floor space with the shiny calf knee high “Lady Troop” boot loaded with buckles by Christian Louboutin. $2,995. Christian Louboutin at Forum Shops at Caesars, 3500 Las Vegas Blvd., S. Las Vegas. (702) 818-1650 .

While the bow and metallic trim complete this suede platform bootie, the reptile-embossed calfskin silhouette heel makes these Miu Miu beauties worth a second glance. $895. Nordstrom at Fashion Show, 3200 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-862-2525.

The multi-faced mirrored heel and platform on YSL’s “Vanda” add drama and glamour to this classic reptile pump in this fall’s hottest color - green. $1150. Neiman Marcus at Fashion Show, 3200 Las Vegas Blvd. S., Las Vegas. 702-731-3636.

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SEPT 6-8

“Buckle your seat belts” – Rolling Stone

Tickets on sale at all Venetian® | Palazzo® Box Offices 702.414.9000 | venetian.com

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8/21/12 11:09 AM

discover Zion National Park Zion National Park holds the distinction of being Utah’s first national park. The massive and colorful sandstone cliffs soar into the sky, leaving visitors and locals in awe of the beauty surrounding them. There are dozens of species of plants and animals that call the park home, so be sure to watch out for them when hiking on the trails and in the canyons. Besides hiking, Zion offers rock climbing, birding, canyoneering, camping, horseback riding, trips down the Virgin River, and a number of other activities. There’s bound to be something to suit all levels of activity, from beginner to advanced.

Zion National Park is located in Washington, Utah. 435-772-3256.

Visit nps.gov/zion/index.htm for more information and to plan your visit.

UNLV Football UNLV is gearing up for great 2012-2013 season. They’ll be taking on some of the best teams in the country and are training hard to handle the grueling schedule. This year, the season kicks off Thursday, August 30 with the Rebels facing Minnesota at 8 p.m. Many of the games will be televised on CBS Sports Network, ESPN, and ESPN2. Check with your provider for specific times and channels. If you want to attend a game in person, tickets are available now at the UNLV Ticket Exchange. A final note for those diehard UNLV-UNR game fans – the game is in Las Vegas this year, on Saturday, October 13 at 12 p.m. Unfortunately, it won’t be televised so get your tickets in advance. UNLV, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas. Times and costs vary. unlvrebels.com

Golf Summerlin Looking for something a little different to do over Labor Day weekend? Despite the hot temperatures, many golf courses are offering labor day specials and Golf Summerlin has a great deal for those want to hit the links. Golf Summerlin consists of Highland Falls, Palm Valley, and Eagle Crest courses. For $85, you can play unlimited golf at any of the above courses, from Friday, August 31-Monday, September 3. Individual rounds of golf are priced at $45. Each course has been designed with golfers in mind, whether you’re looking to play an epic 72-hole round or are just looking to run through a quick 18 before the family BBQ. For more information or to schedule a tee time, call 702-254-7010 or visit golfsummerlin.com 22 DAVID ELUL 5772/TISHREI 5773

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8/21/12 11:10 AM

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HENDERSON Stephanie St. Power Center

SUMMERLIN Boca Park

8/21/12 11:10 AM

daven Candlelighting Elul 5772/Tishrei 5773 SATURDAY, SEPT. 1, ELUL 14 Shabbat ends at 7:47 p.m.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 7, ELUL 20 Light candles at 6:41 p.m.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 8, ELUL 21 Shabbat ends at 7:36 p.m.

ShabbatS elichot FRIDAY, SEPT. 14, ELUL 27 Light candles at 6:31 p.m.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 15, ELUL 28 Shabbat ends at 7:25 p.m.

SUNDAY, SEPT. 16, ELUL 29 Light candles at 6:28 p.m.

Eve of Rosh Hashana MON., SEPT. 17, TISHREI 1, 5773 Light candles after 7:22 p.m.

First day of Rosh Hashana TUESDAY, SEPT. 18, TISHREI 2 Yom Tov ends at 7:21 p.m.

Second day of Rosh Hashana WED., SEPT. 19, TISHREI 3 Fast begins at 4:55 a.m. Fast ends at 7:12 p.m.

Fast of Gedaliah FRIDAY, SEPT. 21, TISHREI 5 Light candles at 6:20 p.m.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 22, TISHREI 6 Shabbat ends at 7:15 p.m.

ShabbatS huvah TUESDAY, SEPT. 25, TISHREI 9 Light candles at 6:14 p.m. Fast begins at 6:28 p.m.

Eve of Yom Kippur WED., SEPT. 26, TISHREI 10 Yom Kippur ends at 7:09 p.m.

YomK ippur SUNDAY, SEPT. 30, TISHREI 14 Light candles at 6:07 p.m.

Eve of Sukkot

Going to Shul ...

For service times and seating arrangements, please contact your Synagogue of choice.

Synagogues Central

CONGREGATION SHAAREI TEFILLA

1331 S. Maryland Parkway Las Vegas, NV 89014 Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America Rabbi Yakov Wasser 702-384-3565 East

CONGREGATION OR-BAMIDBAR

2991 Emerson Ave. Las Vegas, NV 89121 Sephardic Orthodox 702-369-1175 Green Valley/Henderson AHAVAS TORAH CENTER

55 S. Valle Verde Drive, Suite 430 Henderson, NV 89021 Traditional Rabbi Yehoshua Fromowitz 702-487-3133 ext. 1

BETH EL CONGREGATION

2756 N. Green Valley Pkwy, Suite 195 Henderson, NV 89121 Traditional Reform Rabbi Simon Bergman 702-389-8090

CHABAD OF GREEN VALLEY

10870 S. Eastern Ave., Suite 104 Henderson, NV 89052 Orthodox/Chabad Rabbi Mendy Harlig 702-617-0770

CONGREGATION NER TAMID

55 N. Valle Verde Drive Henderson, NV 89074 Union for Reform Judaism Affiliate Sr. Rabbi Sanford D. Akselrad Rabbi/Educator Sadie Reuben Cantorial Intern Philip Goldstein 702-733-6292

MIDBAR KODESH TEMPLE

1940 Paseo Verde Parkway Henderson, NV 89012 United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Rabbi Bradley Tecktiel Cantor Andres Kornworcel 702-454-4848 Southwest CONGREGATION P’NAI TIKVAH Services: 3975 S. Durango Drive, Ste. 104, Las Vegas, NV 89147 Office: 2045 Grouse St., Las Vegas, NV 89134.

Reconstructionist Rabbi Yocheved Mintz Cantor Marla Goldberg

Music Director Marek Rachelski 702-436-4900 Summerlin BET KNESSET BAMIDBAR

Desert Vista Community Center 10360 Sun City Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89134 Traditional Reform Rabbi Elaine Schnee Cantor Jonathan Friedman 702-391-2750

CHABAD OF SUMMERLIN/ DESERT SHORES

2640 Regatta Drive Las Vegas, NV 89128 Orthodox/Chabad Rabbi Yisroel Schanowitz 702-855-0770

CHABAD HEBREW CENTER

8502 W. Lake Mead Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89128 Sephardic Orthodox/Chabad Rabbi Samuel Attal 702-271-8025

TEMPLE BET EMET

Mountain Shadows Community Center 9107 Del Webb Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89134 Reform Rabbi Craig Rosenstein Cantor Lola Rivera 702-254-8103

TEMPLE BETH SHOLOM

10700 Havenwood Lane Las Vegas, NV 89135 United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Rabbi Felipe Goodman Cantor Robert Menes 702-804-1333

TEMPLE SINAI

9100 Hillpointe Road Las Vegas, NV 89134 Union for Reform Judaism Affiliate Rabbi Malcolm Cohen Cator Mariana Gindlin 702-254-5110 YOUNG ISRAEL AISH LAS VEGAS

9590 W. Sahara Ave. Las Vegas, NV 89117 Modern Orthodox Outreach Rabbi Yitzchak Wyne 702-360-8909 West CHABAD CENTRAL

1261 S. Arville St. Las Vegas, NV 89102 Orthodox/Chabad Rabbi Shea Harlig 702-259-0770

24 DAVID ELUL 5772/TISHREI 5773

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8/21/12 11:11 AM

mingle LAS VEGAS JEWISH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE MIXER Oscars Steakhouse, Plaza Hotel Tuesday, August 7

Photographs by Tonya Harvey

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Medical Grade Laser Tattoo Removal 26 DAVID ELUL 5772/TISHREI 5773

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Gail Perry-Mason

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Carolyn Goodman, Mayor of Las Vegas

Phyllis James

Kathleen Sandoval

Christine Cashen

Lee Woodruff

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8/21/12 11:16 AM

live INSIDE speak @ 30 know @ 34 taste @ 38

Ram’s Horn or Shofar. pg. 30

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SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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8/21/12 11:17 AM

speak

Shofar so Good?

Why I Blow at Blowing it.

T

he noise emanating from the business end of my ram’s horn sounds more like a Michelin being relieved of air.

“Just blast it,” commands Jay Poster, who has blown the shofar at Congregation Ner Tamid for 20 years.

Blasting is a task at which I excel – at least in my sleep, so I’ve been told. But try as I may, nothing’s happening up at the other end.

And I’ve got a High Holy Day performance booked at Ner Tamid.

According to the Bible, a ram’s horn was tooted when the Commandments were handed down, when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son and to announce war with oppressors.

Since then, its use has become symbolic: to announce the high holidays. The sound of a shofar rings in the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, much as the sound of party blowers rings in the secular one. Then it serves as the last call announcement for Yom Kippur repentance.

Back in my Hebrew school days, the shofar’s main purpose seemed to be facilitating the funniest joke possible to an 11-year-old boy. Told in numerous variations, always this joke required confusion of the Hebrew world for ram’s horn with the English word for limo

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driver, and one seemingly incredible fringe benefit of that job.

The real kind of shofar blowing has very few benefits. It is not a full-time job, for one thing. Which is the primary reason I’m practicing at the King David mortuary, where Poster is the general manager. (A secondary reason is so no one resting in one of the adjoining rooms can possibly be disturbed.)

Poster, 57, says he enjoys blowing the shofar because “it connects me much stronger with my history and my heritage.” He says he grew up a secular Jew and only connected with his faith after deciding to raise his son Jewish.

“I didn’t even know what a shofar was,” he says.

In addition to his shofar’s license, Poster holds a music degree from San Diego State. His dream was once to be a principal clarinet player in a symphony orchestra. His reality is now playing sax in Ner Tamid’s weekly Sabbath band, the Shabbatones, and being one of five shofar-blowers called upon by Ner Tamid every year. (They include his son, Jeremy, now 30. They perform the sacred ritual as a team.)

“Life kind of takes its own pace,” Poster says. “You get married, you have kids and it decides for you.”

8/21/12 11:18 AM

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Ner Tamid’s rabbi, Sanford Akselrad, says he chose Poster for the gig because he knew of his musical background. He also had a gut feeling that Poster would become “an excellent shofar player who would inspire others.” And, he says, that gut feeling proved accurate.

The rabbi chose me because I pressured him. Even so, it represents an act of forgiveness that gives the honor more meaning and puts even greater pressure on me to deliver.

In 2008, I added cantor to the list of jobs I performed for my “Fear and Loafing” newspaper column. In explaining the nuances of different Jewish movements to my overwhelmingly non-Jewish readership, I wrote that stunt-replacing a cantor was more of a challenge to pull off in a Conservative temple such as Beth Sholom, where I did it. That’s because a Reform temple quite possibly would have allowed me to go-go dance on the pulpit while mixing milk with meat.

Rabbi Akselrad was not among those who slapped a knee at that one.

Instead, he wrote a letter to the editor, concluding: “Mr. Levitan’s slight knowledge of Reform Judaism, the largest movement of Judaism in the United States, suggests that Mr. Levitan should stick with his day job.”

I was a lot happier than my parents were to read that. Not only did something I write achieve letter-to-the-editor status, but I’ve never been addressed as “Mr.” so much. Anyway, the truth was that I couldn’t have agreed more, and I stuck with my day job until it no longer stuck with me.

Of course, the rabbi does not want the hand he so graciously extended bitten off.

“The real mitzvah is not to blow the shofar,” he told me. “It’s to hear the shofar. So the sound that you create is allowing me, as a congregant, to fulfill the mitzvah. And if you don’t take it seriously, 32 DAVID ELUL 5772/TISHREI 5773

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then I can’t partake in that mitzvah properly.”

I don’t know about you, but I heard the threat of eternal damnation in there a little.

“You need to purse your lips and pretend you’re playing the trumpet,” Poster tells me.

Poster lifts up his own shofar to demonstrate, riding a single note for 14 seconds, then climaxing on a higher one. If we were in a boat on the ocean, it would now be surrounded by horny orcas.

This single blast is known as the tekiyah. In temple, it is followed by a set of three called the shevarim, then staccato short blasts known as the teruah.

I lift up my shofar and the Michelin leak resumes. Poster shakes his head. Emergency measures are then taken. Poster phones David Rubinstein, a trumpet player who works for him at the mortuary (no, not as a trumpet player).

Rubinstein issues me the same simple directions he gives school kids born without the gene for lip-buzzing: “Make a face like your smiling”; “flap your lips”; “pretend there’s a grain of rice in your mouth.”

Will I eventually get a handle on my horn and deliver a performance worthy of Rabbi Akselrad and my ancestors?

Rosh Hashanah is the Day of Judgment. And you can judge me for yourself –along with about 200 others – on Saturday, Sept. 18, at 10 a.m.

No admission ticket is required, by the way, since it’s the less popular second day of Rosh Hashanah. You didn’t think they’d take a chance on the day people PAY to attend, did you?

— Corey Levitan SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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know

The Music of Memory Mona Golabek Channels Her Mother, Lisa Jura In The Pianist of Willesden Lane

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8/21/12 11:24 AM

I

n the middle of a Los Angeles heat wave, Mona Golabek sits serenely at a piano in an empty theater at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. She is warming up just before the house opens for a Saturday performance of her one-woman tour de force, “The Pianist of Willesden Lane.”

The show, on its third extension at the Geffen, is on the brink of a national tour. As I arrive in the theater, Mona halts her “warmup” — it sounds more like a classical masterpiece to a visitor — and greets me with a hug as we sit down to talk about her artistry and the legacy she is dedicated to preserving.

Mona Golabek was born in Los Angeles to Lisa Jura and Michael Golabek. Mona’s father was a decorated member of the Polish Resistance Movement; her mother, a concert pianist. Her parents immigrated to America after World War II, seeking solace and to begin a new life with daughter Renee and eventually Mona. As a child, Mona spent a great deal of time at the piano learning music from her mom.

“My mother was my closest friend and my best teacher,” she says. “In piano lessons she was really concerned in giving me the emotional backdrop of each song, so that I would interpret it from the heart. She encouraged the emotional essence of the music, the human side.”

Lessons were “more like a fairy tale,” she recalls, songs that correlated with stories from her mother’s childhood. “They took on whole new meanings!”

Mona has continued her Dina_Titus.indd mother’s legacy as a musician and artist. In every song she plays, each word has a purpose. “Everyone has a story to tell,” she says. “We just have to find it.”

And hers?

“I was about to make my debut at the Greek piano concerto, at the Seattle Symphony, which was the concerto [my mother] always told me about that was the story of her life. I just woke up and thought, ‘I want to tell my mother’s story,’ so that’s how it began for me.”

The story of Lisa Jura underpins Golabek’s solo performance (after her own book The Children of Willesden Lane) at the Geffen and the memory she hopes to preserve.

Lisa Jura was 14 and a musical prodigy at the verge of World War II. Her parents, Malka and Abraham, were offered a Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) berth for only one of their three daughters.

For a limited number of Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the free city of Danzig, the ferry provided passage to London and safety. After agonizing over their decision, Malka and Abraham chose to send their middle child, Lisa, on the lonely voyage, reasoning that her musical talent would carry her through the war. It was through Kindertransport that Lisa found herself on Willesden Lane, surrounded by the characters, experiences and music that some day would inform and populate her own daughter Mona’s book. Her mother’s words still resonate, Mona says.

L’Shana Tova y. il m fa r u o y d n a u o y to (702) 256-3462 www.DinaTitus.com

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SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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“She always told me, ‘Each piece of music tells a unique story.’”

After struggling for 20 years to tell Lisa’s story, she finally sold her book to Time Warner. Shortly afterward, she crossed paths with Hershey (George Gershwin Alone and Beethoven as I Knew Him) Felder, a Canadian pianist famous for combining theater and keyboard performances. “He’s a very generous spirit to other artists,” Mona says. “I wanted to do what he was doing.” She played her show for him, and he loved it. Three years later, the two collaborators presented it to the Geffen, where it is now running.

“My dream was, if I had a chance to tell my mother’s story, and I got the opportunity to perform a theatrical production, I believed I could inspire millions of young people to the power of the message: ‘If you hold on to something through the darkest of times, you’re going to find your way through. But you’ve got to hold on to your dream.’ It’s a universal story, really, and in my mother’s case it was the music.”

Getting the play produced was one thing. Now all Mona had to do was become an actor. “I had to learn a whole new skill set,” she says.

“I didn’t know stage left from stage right.” She enrolled in Howard Fine’s master class in Hollywood, honed her craft and acquired the skills her solo show demanded.

“I was the oldest person in the class. I sat dumbfounded by the language and techniques. But, I was a performer, and I had the discipline of being a concert pianist, and I had the fire in my belly,” she says.

Once the two-month extension at the Geffen is complete, her show is scheduled for runs in Las Vegas, Boston, Chicago and Berkeley (and, yes, there are whispers of an off-Broadway stint).

“The most important lesson I’ve learned,” she says, “is to walk on stage with honesty and the deepest sense of humility. This story has the power to enter the hearts of the audience.”

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She derives joy from sharing and honoring both the tragedy and triumphs of her mother, and the legacies of her father and grandparents. As she puts it, “How do you take the lessons of loss, and what do you do with them in life? My parents taught my sister and (me), ‘Make something with your life. Give a powerful message.’”

She tries to heed those words again and again through her work.

Today, The Children of Willesden Lane is being used as a teaching vehicle in schools around the world. Mona speaks of children she has met at readings across the United States, youngsters for whom the book has become a touchstone – not just as a Holocaust story.

“No one has a singular story,” she says. “It’s all of our stories. … We are going to have to continue to fight these incredible things that go on in our world, racism, anti-Semitism … but I’m hopeful. I know that the world is getting better. It’s an exciting time to be young.”

Mona may be a beacon of hope, but she is a realist and pragmatic, too. “Who will tell the story of the Holocaust once the survivors are gone?” she asks. Against that backdrop, the importance of her novel and her performances becomes clearer: It is about the message and making sure it is preserved.

As an artist she continues to find new ways to maintain this legacy. In 2003, she established Hold on to Your Music (www.holdontoyourmusic. org). Inspired by her mother, the nonprofit’s mission is to “ … seek and expand awareness and understanding of the ethical implications of world events such as the Holocaust, and the power of the arts, especially music, to embolden the human spirit in the face of adversity.”

For the rest of us, Mona Golabek has provided an abundance of hope and encouragement to pursue our dreams, and to learn from the past, take it to heart and keep the memory alive.

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taste

The Kosher Baker Paula Shows Us How to Entertain like the Pros

Mini Carrot Souffles with Cinnamon Creme Anglaise

S

he looks like a model for a Dove soap commercial. Wholesome, beautiful and trim, she appears younger than her 48 years. Her unassuming effervescence lures you into an easy exchange, as if she were a next-door neighbor stopping by to chat. Then you realize the conversation has subtly changed to pastries – kosher pastries.

Paula Shoyer simply can’t stifle her enthusiasm. She’s determined to change how we love to hate the passé taste of kosher desserts. Fast becoming the Martha Stewart of sublime kosher baking, Paula has authored a veritable bible on delectable kosher pastry recipes. And she’s made it easy to follow, for those of us who can’t bake worth a dime.

The Kosher Baker offers more than 160 dairy-free, mouthwatering recipes mostly of her own careful creation. While she includes timehonored holiday classics, she adds elegant and trendy recipes not

typically found on kosher tables: rich and creamy tiramisu; key lime pie; flan; and mousses. And they’re all certified pareve (Yiddish for food prepared without meat or dairy products, or their derivatives).

Paula’s baking passion was cultivated at the Ritz Escoffier École de Gastronomie Française in Paris, where she earned a diploma in 1996. She opened Paula’s Parisian Pastries Cooking School just outside Washington, D.C., and became the editor of Susie Fishbein’s popular Kosher By Design cookbook series. Writing her own would come much later.

Paula’s path to pastry paradise hardly began with sugar and spice, and she’s eager to share the details of her journey with anyone who’ll listen.

“I’m on my third career, and I’ve raised four children. To get from there to here is hopefully inspirational. People say to me all the

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time, ‘I’ve always wanted to do this’ or ‘I’ve always wanted to do that.’ I look them in the eye and tell them that once upon a time I had a dream that I wanted to publish a cookbook.”

She was born and raised on New York’s Long Island, in a modern Orthodox family. She attended Jewish schools and to this day keeps kosher. “My mother never baked at all. She was a master at finding kosher desserts in the bakery. But my grandmother…Now she was a super master baker. I loved being in her kitchen. Her baked goods were to die for. The Kosher Baker is dedicated to her memory and includes some of her truly delicious recipes.”

After high school Paula observed her parents’ well-intentioned expectations and enrolled in a pre-med program at Brandeis University in Boston. “No one ever asked me what I wanted to do,” she said, though she always loved science and math.

A few close calls in the chemistry lab prompted her to switch to a less accident-prone major, one that again satisfied her parents’ expectation. She eventually graduated from American University Law School in Washington, D.C., and began an environmental law career.

She and her future husband, who practiced international law, met and eventually married and moved to Geneva, Switzerland, for his work.

“I took a job in Geneva as legal adviser for a Jewish organization called UN Watch, which is part of the American Jewish Committee.

I attended hearings where Yasser Arafat spoke on human rights.

I worked on resolutions getting anti-Semitism classified as discrimination. I wrote speeches for the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Morris Abrams. It was all very exciting.”

She and her husband cultivated cadres of friends, and an international social life. They skied and traveled all over Europe, entertained and had their first child.

“I stopped working at that point but yearned to do something.

Here I was in Geneva, so close to Paris, the pastry capital of the world! I always wanted to learn to bake. So I enrolled in the top pastry school there, finished the course and got my degree. Then I got pregnant with our second child.”

Back in Geneva, her new-found baking skills were in high demand at community social events. “There I was baking gourmet goodies to go in a kitchen the size of a thumbnail; pregnant, and with my now 18-month-old daughter in a high chair. It was crazy.”

She also was approached to teach a kosher baking class for the holidays. “That’s when I thought, ‘Why not take these sumptuous French pastry recipes and substitute the dairy for pareve ingredients?’

I began to experiment with all kinds of ways to maintain the creamy and buttery flavor and texture, but without the milk.”

This demand continued when she and her now-growing family returned to D.C. She redesigned her kitchen to accommodate baking orders, plus her classes, and then found out she was pregnant again — with twins. “I had also wanted to write a book with the many recipes I had by then created; but most plans had to now be put on hold. It was just too much!”

It took her years to finish the book, and almost as long to find a publisher. “I got so many rejection letters! I was told over and over that there was no market for this subject. In my heart I was sure that the Jewish community needed this book. Yet, I was beginning to get so discouraged.

“A dear friend of mine, who has since passed away, told me, ‘If you do something you love, something good will come of it. So just keep at it.’ I did and she was right. “ Eventually, Brandeis University Press jumped at the opportunity to design and publish her book. The rest is history. She’s

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done book tours, TV and radio interviews, lectures, cooking demonstrations, even a televised master baking contest. Plus, she has her cooking school.

“I believe the book’s success begins with its approach. When I set out to write it, I didn’t think about what I wanted the reader to know. I thought instead about what the reader might need and want to know from their perspective. ‘What can I give them to make their life easier?’”

“My first thought was ‘It doesn’t have to be so difficult.’ I asked, ‘How much time does a person have? Is it Friday afternoon at 3, or is it Wednesday afternoon? Shabbat guests are coming on Friday evening, and you have the luxury of thinking ahead.’”

So she organized the book into three major sections to address the issues of time and experience. The first section is for the nonbaker and features 45 recipes ready for the oven in 15 minutes or less, including her Apple Upside Down Cake.

“If you’re baking for 30 people and you need three desserts, that’s where you go. If it’s 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, that’s where you go.

If you have kids who love to bake, that’s where you go,” she says confidently. These recipes are still as delicious, she adds, and look elegant, too.

The next section features the two-step desserts: a cake with a filling, or a cake with a glaze; or something that needs to chill for 30 minutes before using it – such as her Challah Beer Bread Pudding with a Light Caramel Sauce.

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The third section, according to Paula, has the fancier recipes for those with more time: French tarts; Chocolate Mousse Meringue Layer Cake; Cinnamon Apricot Pull-Apart Babka; even crème brulee.

When writing her book, Paula remembered seeing the same desserts again and again at the Jewish events she attended – ones that never tasted very good.

“With the industrialization of the ‘50s, bakeries starting buying the same dough and fillings from the same suppliers. So a bakery in New York and a bakery in Chicago use the same materials, and their baked goods all have the same boring taste. That’s why I do what I do.

I learned from the pastry shops in Paris. Everything there is still made from scratch; so even though it’s pareve it’s absolutely delicious.”

Paula expects her new book, The Holiday Kosher Bake, in bookstores in 2013. Organized by holiday, it will include recipes for people on special diets and for those who have diabetes.

She’s excited about her two fabulous kosher for Pesach tarts and pie recipes. “No one ever makes tarts and pies for Passover. These are mouthwatering and look simply exquisite.”

Paula Shoyer has long since realized her dream to publish a cookbook. Along the way she got a few educations, had some whirlwind adventures, raised four children and started a kosher baking revolution, proving a pastry at a time that Kosher food can be beautiful, elegant and simply delectable.

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Ice Cream’s Jewish Innovators

Jews have pioneered the premium ice cream craze for 40 years, from Häagen-Dazs to Ben & Jerry’s and beyond

By Joan Nathan, published in Tablet Magazine on August 2.

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A

few weeks ago, roaming the endless aisles of the mammoth Fancy Food show in Washington, D.C., I stopped at the booth for Chozen, a premium ice cream with flavors inspired by the Jewish holidays: matzo crunch, apples and honey, chocolate gelt.

“Who would have the nerve or the chutzpah to put matzo in ice cream?” Chozen co-founder and CEO Meredith Fisher told me.

“Jews like to kvetch, but who can kvetch about ice cream?”

It got me thinking about the connection between Jews and ice cream: I’ve reported on Jews in the ice cream business several times during my career as a food writer, without really connecting all the dots. But there are dots to connect. Because while Chozen— founded in 2009 by Meredith Fisher with her mother, Ronne—may be the most obviously Jewish ice cream on the market, it’s hardly the first brand started by Jews. In fact, Jews helped launch the entire craze over premium ice cream four decades ago and have played a key role in its success ever since.

“They are used to catering to a demanding clientele who expect quality, rather than being surprised by it,” explained Ellen Brown, author of Scoop and a food writer for the Providence Journal.

“Jews have always been entrepreneurs and think out of the box,” said Mitch Berliner, a food distributor who has been in the ice cream business for 35 years. “Even about ice cream.”

The notion that ice cream was a luxury product dates back more than a century, to the time when Jewish immigrants were flooding into America and ice cream was something that most people churned themselves at home. “Ice cream is generally regarded by families of limited means as a luxury only to be indulged in on special occasions, when company is expected or for birthdays and high holidays,” a writer in the American Jewess explained in 1896. “The poor children, who never get half enough of this frozen delight, are told that it is very unhealthy, and to partake too freely thereof is fraught with the most disastrous consequences to their little stomachs.

This widely diffused belief, and the expensiveness of cream when ordered from a confectioner’s, have relegated the most palatable of dainties to the realm of rarely-to-be-attained desires.”

Ice cream became a much cheaper consumer product decades later, and today giants like Nestlé and Unilever control most of the massproduced ice cream on supermarket shelves. But in the 1970s, a Jewish immigrant from Poland changed the business forever and made ice cream a luxury product once again.

Reuben Mattus started in the ice cream business in the 1920s as a child of 10 just after he and his widowed mother, Leah, stepped off the boat in America. His uncle was in the Italian lemon-ice business in Brooklyn, and Reuben joined him, helping his mother squeeze lemons for the ices they sold in Brooklyn and then the South Bronx.

Until 1927, when the first refrigerator was manufactured, ice cream was seasonal. “In those

days, we bought the ice from the Great Lakes in the winter and buried it with sawdust in pits in the ground until summer,” Mattus told me when I was researching my book Jewish Cooking in America, before he died in 1994. By the late ’20s, the family began making ice pops, and by 1929 chocolate-covered ice-cream bars and sandwiches.

“People wouldn’t buy our ice cream,” Mattus remembered. “I said to myself, ‘Why can’t we make good ice cream so people will buy it?’

Then I got a hold of some books and studied how to make ice cream.

The first thing I told my mother was to fire our ice-cream maker.”

Mattus’ new kind of ice cream was so heavy that he had to change his equipment. “The most important thing is to make it taste good,” Mattus said. But the second most important thing was to market it properly. “I prided myself on being a marketing man,” he told me.

“If you’re the same like everybody else, you’re lost. The number one thing was to get a foreign sounding name.”

How did a Polish immigrant come up with a name like HäagenDazs? He was inspired by Jewish history: “The only country which saved the Jews during World War II was Denmark, so I put together a totally fictitious Danish name and had it registered,” Mattus told me. “Häagen-Dazs doesn’t mean anything. [But] it would attract attention, especially with the umlaut.”

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Mattus also made sure to get his product certified kosher: “If I made good ice cream, I wanted my people to get it, so I made it kosher,” he said. Häagen-Dazs—which was later sold to Pillsbury in the 1980s—was first sold in Manhattan’s gourmet shops in pint containers, as a luxury product. “Schrafft’s cost 52 cents a pint.

Ours was 75 cents a pint,” he told me. “I didn’t believe in selling it for 59 cents. I made a special ice cream for people who wanted a special taste. That was my attempt and it worked. It sold by word of mouth.”

By 1973, Häagen-Dazs was being distributed nationally. And that same year, another man, married about that time to a Jew who became his business partner, was making ice cream history near Boston: Steve Herrell opened Steve’s in 1973 in a converted drycleaning joint in Somerville, Mass. The shop, with its mismatched chairs and tables in wild colors, looked like many other comfortable college hangouts, but it wasn’t.

When Steve’s opened, most ice cream being sold was vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry; even Häagen-Dazs’ most exotic flavors at the time were rum raisin and boysenberry, according to Berliner,

Häagen-Dazs’ first distributor outside New York. Herrell decided the time was right to mix things up a bit.

Herrell lived in a co-op at the time, sharing a house in Cambridge with six roommates. “One of my housemates told me that she had been to a place in Miami where they would mix things on a slab, and she said why don’t I try that. We could then say that we had thousands of flavors,” Herrell told me several years ago when I was researching an article for Bon Appetit. “But since that time, I have been unable to find out what this place was in Miami. Then, again, mixing things into food is not new, so generally what my response is that I introduced mixing in to the commercial ice cream trade.”

As the flavors multiplied, Herrell wrote them in different colors on little slats of wood in the shop: malted vanilla, cookie dough, peanut butter swirl, triple chocolate pudding, with mix-ins like Heath Bars and M&M’s. Who’d ever tasted, or for that matter even imagined, such flavors almost 40 years ago? Long lines formed every night for Steve’s ice cream.

By making “mix-ins” big business, Herrell cemented his place in ice cream history. Burned out from 90-hour work weeks, he sold his ice cream shop in 1977. (The store became a chain, was sold again, and finally closed; last year, David Stein, one of Herrell’s former employees from his original shop, revived the brand, producing pints for sale in stores.)

But Herrell didn’t stay out of the business for long: He opened Herrell’s ice cream parlor in Northampton, Mass., in 1980—that’s where I caught up with him, chatting in one of his store’s

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wooden booths while a scooper behind the counter mixed Heath Bar pieces into malted vanilla ice cream for me.

I asked Herrell how he felt now that his idea for “mix-ins” had spread throughout the country, with little financial benefit to him.

“Good,” he told me. “I feel it is very rewarding that people love so much what I have done. I can barely handle this small business with bookkeeping, personnel, and a landlord. Fortunately, it is for me balanced off by seeing and talking to happy customers, seeing people enjoying their sundaes and shakes.”

Herrell also influenced another important Jewish ice cream company: One day in the mid-’70s, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield came to watch Herrell chop up Heath Bars and Oreos and mix them into ice cream. “Steve pioneered the rejuvenation of homemade ice cream and mix-ins,” said Greenfield.

Inspired by what they saw, Cohen and Greenfield opened their first Ben & Jerry’s ice cream parlor in 1978 in Burlington, Vt., in a converted gas station. “At first we incorporated mix-ins; then we realized that we weren’t very good at it,” said Greenfield. “We muddled through for a while, and then we made flavored mixins like Oreo mint and vanilla Heath Bar crunch.”

Brown, the food writer,

sees Herrell and Cohen and Greenfield as part of a larger trend: “A lot of ice cream businesses were started by baby boomers,” she said, “back when the baby boomers were young hippies and a lot of their parents helped them get the businesses going.”

Chozen, the latest in the line of Jewish ice cream companies, is also a family affair, only this time the mom stayed involved. “My two daughters were sitting and eating frozen rugelach one night, and one of them said, ‘Wouldn’t that taste good in ice cream?’ ” said Ronne Fisher, co-founder and chief “flavor officer” of Chozen.

After a weeklong course at ice cream university to learn the basics, she bought a machine and started making ice cream with rugelach, matzo, halva, babka—all kosher and dairy. “These delicious flavors are typically Jewish and Eastern European,” she said, noting that flavors on the horizon include blueberry blintz and matzo kugel.

The Fishers don’t see themselves as a mass-market producer, though. “I think we are a niche business,” Ronne Fisher continued. “We have no aspiration to be Häagen-Dazs. It’s just the two of us.

We love it. We are small. Our hope is to bring smiles to people’s faces.”

“This article is reprinted from Tablet Magazine, at tabletmag. com, the online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.”

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think

Dybbuk in the Box A Jewish Demon Stars in Lionsgate’s Fall Release The Possession

By Jaq Greenspon

T

he crash came long before dawn.

I know because the dog jumped onto the bed. If I hadn’t been wakened by the commotion, his head buried in my back would have done the trick. I fumbled for my phone in the dark. 3:07 a.m.

I didn’t think much of the noise. It’s happened before — the dog knocking something over and being scared by it. For some reason, though, this seemed different. I got up, padded to the living room.

The usual suspects were upright; my gaze shifted. Loose papers on the floor, near the table. The dog must have got caught in the computer wires, I thought, yanked the hard drive down. Just a guess. I switched on the light, realized I was dead wrong: I’d implicated my innocent dog, now cowering in the bedclothes.

Two legs of my heavy oak table had inexplicably snapped at the joints, dropping the tabletop into a crazy angle, hurtling almost

everything on it to the floor. I mused for a moment over the farreaching effects of a dybbuk.

A what?

A dybbuk (or dibbuk), according to the Jewish Virtual Library, is “an evil spirit which enters into a living person, cleaves to his soul, causes mental illness, talks through his mouth and represents a separate and alien personality.” The term found its way into literature in the 17th century, but stories of people “possessed” date to the Second Temple.

Originally, common belief held that the dybbuk was a demon inhabitant in a sick person’s body. Later, as with many evolving folk tales, the evil spirit was thought to be the soul of someone laid to rest improperly – a demon ensconced in a live body. By the 16th century, stories about the dybbukim’s origins really started to get

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complicated. And by Shakespeare’s heyday, in the late 1500s and early 1600s, dybbuks “were generally considered to be souls which, on account of the enormity of their sins, were not even allowed to transmigrate [get into heaven], and as ‘denuded spirits’ they sought refuge in the bodies of living persons. The entry of a dibbuk into a person was a sign of his having committed a secret sin, which opened a door for the dibbuk.”

By the end of the 17th century, booklets described famous exorcisms. The last one, published in Jerusalem in 1904, concerned “a dibbuk which entered the body of a woman and was exorcised by Ben-Zion Ḥazzan.”

But what to do with an evicted spirit? If released to its origins, or cast to a remote pit or evil place, it would surely return – eventually.

The most practical solution seemed to be to trap it, to create a metaphysical “prison” and confine it. A tight box.

Before you can say “Ghostbusters containment unit” you’ve got yourself a new home for a dybbuk. As with Pandora’s proverbial container, the box should never be opened, of course, lest its evil be loosed on the world again.

Of course, with the 20th century came medical explanations. Dybbuk possession started to be explained away as “hysteria” or “schizophrenia.” Was science trying to put a happy face on something inexplicable?

As Jews, we don’t get many monsters to call our own. Take Halloween. Vampires? Please. They’re repelled by the sight of the cross, and holy water (as consecrated by a priest) can burn them.

Honestly, I don’t think a blood-sucking member of the undead is going to shrink in terror from a plate of gefilte fish. Werewolves?

Nope. They’re a gypsy curse – not Christian but not Jewish either.

The closest we get to the big three universal monsters is the tall guy Dr. Frankenstein created – a stitched-up patient who can reasonably be equated to the golem.

Most often associated with Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, the golem was a humanoid of clay brought to life as a protector of Jews in the Prague ghetto. Really, then, not even a monster.

Sure, it could wreak havoc on people trying to harm the Jewish population, but the gesture – no offense – was purely defensive.

Even the idea of possession by a hellish demon is a Christian construct. The Bible very specifically does not address the topic of a Jewish afterlife, choosing instead to focus on the time of life on Earth itself. Yes, sometime after the original Bible, the concept of Gehenna as a place of repentance and punishment for sinful Jewish souls came into being. However, since one could repent at the gates or at most serve no more than 12 months before going to a much happier place, the thought of eternal damnation doesn’t hold any water in Jewish mysticism.

Then there’s our dybbuk. Here we have a soul who’s so evil it doesn’t even qualify for possible redemption and, based on subsequent action, probably wouldn’t take that opportunity anyway. So what does all that have to do with my kitchen table falling apart in the middle of the night?

The answer can be found in The Possession, a new movie from SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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Lionsgate and Ghost House Pictures – inspired by actual events.

In 2004, Los Angeles Times reporter Leslie Gornstein discovered an actual dybbuk Box for sale on (of course) eBay. According to the auction site description, a wine cabinet was bought at an estate sale in Portland, Ore., where family members were selling off the final effects of a 103-year-old matriarch. The seller said her grandmother “had been born in Poland, where she grew up, married, raised a family and lived until she was sent to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. She was the only member of her family who survived the camp. Her parents, brothers, a sister, husband and two sons and a daughter were all killed. She survived the camp by escaping with some other prisoners and somehow making her way to Spain, where she lived until the end of the war.”

It was there that the grandmother acquired The Box, one of three items she brought with her when she immigrated to America. During the granddaughter’s childhood, the wine cabinet (a wooden box with bas-relief grapes on its two front doors) was stored on a high shelf and never opened. The grandmother had wanted The Box buried with her. But Jewish law forbade this final wish, so the family was selling it instead. The buyer was told The Box contained a dybbuk.

Not being Jewish, it meant nothing to him. He took The Box to his furniture restoration shop and opened it. Inside it were a number of odd, seemingly unrelated items, including a couple of wheatback pennies, a lock of hair and a wine glass. But what followed the opening was far from mundane: strange smells, ghostly attacks, a serious illness affecting the buyer’s mother, for whom The Box was a birthday present.

The man who bought The Box in 2001 sold it on eBay in 2003. The second buyer also experienced a number of strange and frightening events and decided to resell The Box in February 2004. Enter the L.A. Times. And Hollywood.

Sam Raimi, who directed the original Spider-Man trilogy, got his start giving people funny nightmares with his Evil Dead films. Raimi moved quickly to grab the rights to the story.

“We always live with the fear of the unknown,” he says. “And, of course, we want to know if ghosts and demons really exist or not, and what happens to your spirit when you die. So when someone tells a story like that of the dybbuk Box and its terrible, terrible effects on everyone who got close to [it], it cuts to the very core of our most immense fears and desires. In this real story, we saw a chance to explore some classic horror themes – and make them new for a new generation.”

Several writers tried to make the project work. But it took the married team of Juliet Snowden and Stiles White (co-writers on the recent Poltergeist remake) to get things clicking. For these two, who lived in the Hassidic-heavy Hancock Park area of Los Angeles for seven years, the opportunity to write a film that explores Jewish mysticism, and represents an old-fashioned scarefest, was simply too good to pass up.

Using the actual events as a starting point, Snowden and White leapt into the story-telling process. “We were interested in the idea of a cursed antique, so to speak,” explained White. “That there was this object that had kind of traveled from person to person and dif-

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At right: writer Jaq Greenspon’s oak table.

ferent bad things had happened to them.” Snowden provided more on the brainstorming that went into it. “We had the idea that we start the movie with a broken family and that they’re struggling because of the divorce.” It was never intended as a documentary.

“In the original story, a family did purchase this Box, a son gave it to his mother for her birthday and there were horrible consequences,” says White. “We kept a lot of elements from the true story.”

But drama’s drama. The writers wanted to maximize tension, while keeping a respectful distance from The Box. “When it was first announced that we were going to be the writers on the project …we got an email … from Jason [Haxton], introducing himself, saying, ‘I’m the current owner and I understand you’re going to be writing the movie based on the dybbuk Box,’ ” said White. “ ‘If you’re interested and you’d like to borrow it during the process of writing, and having it in the house so you can research it or get inspiration from it, I’d be happy to arrange to get it to you,’” White recalls, chuckling to himself.

“It’s one of those instances when you don’t think you’re a superstitious person, and maybe you don’t believe in things like that … but, suddenly and definitively, it’s a big ‘No. No, thank you. We’re happy to just look at pictures of it online. But, no, we do not want it in our house.’ It is interesting when suddenly a real life element bleeds into your creating of the movie.”

For Snowden, part of the appeal was learning more about the Hassidic community she had lived among for so long. Early on, she says, she and White made a creative choice to include a Hassidic mentor

character, someone the main characters could turn to for guidance and explanation. During their research, they discovered the mysticism inherent in the Hassidic way of life and the daily struggle the community endures to maintain its faith.

“What amazed me,” says Snowden, “is that they’re in the middle of bustling American cities, and yet they can manage to hang on to their customs and practices. Standing outside of that, watching that, to me it seems so heroic – a Hassidic person walking past a billboard that’s outrageous – in their black suits and their hats. It’s such a juxtaposition of American culture and Hassidic culture.”

All of it found province in their compelling story, a tale crafted with the utmost care and respect for the religious practices involved.

And though the writers aren’t Jewish, they’ve given the community a horror film monster we can all be proud of. As for me, I’m happy to submit this piece with the hope that I didn’t draw too much attention to myself. One broken table’s about all I can take.

SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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Mujaddarra

The 10th century BCE Gezer Calendar, 20 miles west of Jerusalem. The script is either Phoenician or paleo-Hebrew.

T

hese may be hard times — but enough to contemplate TEOTWAWKI? That may be the case for some people, particularly those who’ve been following reports for several years that the Mayan calendar doesn’t go past Dec. 21, 2012. Hollywood caught wind of that same riff some time ago — and made a heavily laden CGI-effects movie about it in 2010.

But experts say the simple truth is that the Mayan calendar does go far beyond Dec. 21 of this year, thousands of years past, in fact, and that those who believe otherwise are misguided. (TEOTWAWKI, for the non-survivalists, is shorthand for “the end of the world as we know it.”)

Do we believe that calendars, including the incredible carved versions the Mayas produced at the peak of their pre-Columbian majesty, are somehow dispositive of doomsday? Probably not. But a brief look at the history of these time trackers might be instructive — just in case.

Long before Cai Lun, a Han court eunuch in China, got credit in the 1st century for inventing paper to record such events, ancient societies already were relying on the sun, moon, planets and stars to measure the passage of time. In fact, the solar day is considered the earliest form of a calendar, as the ancients kept track of alternating periods of light and dark to establish a rudimentary understanding of time. And, by some accounts, Ice Age hunters scratched lines and

made holes in bones and sticks more than 20,000 years ago in what now is Europe — possibly as a crude way of enumerating the days between lunar phases.

Some 5,000 years ago, Sumerians in present-day Iraq’s Tigris-Euphrates valley produced a calendar that divided the year into 30-day months. And Stonehenge, the prehistoric wonder erected more than 4,000 years ago in England, might have been aligned the way it was to chart seasonal or celestial events, in addition to being a burial ground, though scholars have shown enthusiasm for and against that theory.

Around 3100 B.C.E., the Egyptians formulated a 365-day calendar based on the rise of Sirius — the Dog Star — and its relation to annual flooding along the Nile. Prior to 2000 B.C.E., the Babylonians (in present-day Iraq) charted a year comprising a dozen alternating 29- and 30-day lunar months. The Mayas watched the sun, moon and the planet Venus to establish sophisticated calendars. The celestial-cycle records the Mayas left behind showed their belief that the world was created in 3114 B.C.E. Other civilizations, including the ancient Greeks, the Jews and the Chinese, devised lunisolar calendars (with both sun and moon aspects) in anticipation of religious observances, feasts and agricultural events.

Typically, calendars are based on one or more of three astronomical events: a complete rotation of Earth (sunrise to sunrise); a complete orbit of Earth around the sun (roughly 365.24 days); or SEPTEMBER 2012 DAVID

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The prehistoric monument Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England

an orbit of the moon around Earth (about 29.53 days). Obviously, these numbers aren’t easily divisible, so our calendars are inherently off a bit, though some experts argue that calendars are valid as long as rules are applied consistently to their use.

Of the ancient calendar systems, the Mayans and the other Mesoamerican societies that followed their lead had the most complex.

The Mayan calendar consisted of a 260-day Sacred Round, known as the tzolkin, and the 365-day Vague Year, or haab. The Maya used the Sacred Round to determine important activities related to humans and the gods; and they used it for naming people, predicting the future and deciding the best dates for battle or marriage. The Vague Year consisted of 18 months of 20 days, plus a five-day period at the end called Uayeb, which was believed to hold a combination of danger, death and bad luck.

Merriam-Webster traces the noun calendar to the 1200s, from the Medieval Latin kalendarium, for a moneylender’s account book.

WebExhibits.org cites the convention of ancient Rome, when a priest observed the sky and proclaimed a new moon cycle to the king. In the centuries that followed, Romans used Kalends (based on their word calare, “to proclaim”) to refer to the first day of each new month.

The Christian calendar focuses on a tropical year, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun (365.24 days) as measured near the tropics, where our glowing star is almost directly overhead; Muslims focused on the moon’s orbit (a synodic month) of the Earth; and the

Jews and Chinese combined a bit of both with their complicated lunisolar calendars.

For the Jewish calendar, years are linked to the Earth’s motion around the sun, and months to the movement of the moon about the Earth. According to WebExhibits.org, the Sanhedrin president Hillel II is said to have set down the definition of the Jewish calendar circa 359 C.E., though the original details are uncertain. Jews around the world use this calendar for religious purposes, and it has been designated the official calendar of Israel.

Lunisolar calendars, including the Jewish one, use years to coincide with the tropical year, and months to mirror synodic, or new moon, months. But 12 synodic months constitute a period that is about 11 days shorter than a tropical year. So the Jewish calendar requires insertion of an intercalary (in-TURK-uh-lehr-ee) month about every third year. The goal is to keep the calendar in harmony with the seasons.

According to WebExhibits.org, in ancient Israel religious leaders looked to nature for help in formulating their calendar. For instance, they would determine the date for Passover each spring by observing whether roads were dry enough for pilgrims, and if lambs were ready for slaughter. If neither was true, an extra month was added to the year.

Under the Jewish calendar, an ordinary, or non-leap, year has 353, 354 or 355 days. Leap years have 383, 384 or 385 days. Accord-

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ingly, each year is designated “deficient” or “regular” or “complete,” depending on the number of days included. An ordinary year comprises 12 months, a leap year 13. Leap years occur in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 of a 19-year Metonic cycle.

Each month starts roughly on the day of a new moon (molad). The months are Tishri, Heshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar I, Adar II, Nisan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av and Elul. Adar I only occurs in leap years; during non-leap years, Adar II is known as “Adar.” A complete year is created by adding one day to Heshvah, and a deficient year involves taking a day from Kislev. The new year starts on the day of the new moon (Molad Tishri) occurring about 354 days after 1 Tishri of the previous year, or 384 days afterward if the previous year was a leap year.

Let’s face it. All calendars require a bit of tweaking to correspond to the vicissitudes of real life, where astronomers must grapple with the usual math, plus the calculus of gravitational forces, orbital inclinations and things mere mortals would rather not contemplate.

At best, perfection is an elusive goal for those asked to reckon with average days and months, and inconsistent forces over time.

For the Roman Catholic Church, embodied in the late 16th century by Pope Gregory XIII, the errors inherent with the 355-day calendar that Caius Julius Caesar put forth in 45 B.C.E. made it impossible to fix the spring equinox with any certainty. The Julian calendar, which incorporated the rule that leap years be evenly divided by four, assumed a span of 365.25 days between vernal equinoxes, a period that was actually about 11 minutes shorter than that. Caesar’s choice of Jan. 1 as the first day of a new year — a nod to Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions — also would run afoul of the ecclesiastical world in ensuing centuries over that date’s tradition of wild parties.

Fifteen hundred years after the Julian calendar’s introduction, church mathematicians knew the equinox discrepancy was accruing at the rate of about three days every four centuries, pushing the seasonal demarcation ever farther from its real date. With the equinox related to when Easter was observed, the church considered this misalignment unacceptable. The Gregorian calendar, announced in a papal bull issued Feb. 24, 1582, reformed both the Julian calendar and the lunar cycle the church had used, fostering a more accurate tabulation of Easter’s actual date.

Thereafter, years divisible by four were leap years, except those exactly divisible by 100. Computations were made, and an adjustment instituted, so that the vernal equinox was moved from March 11 to March 21. The calendar continued the previous year-number system (Anno Domini), from the traditional date of the incarnation of Jesus Christ — the epoch 6th century scholar Dionysius Exiguus established while formulating a table of dates for Easter. By all accounts, Dionysius did not establish an accurate date for the birth of Christ, however, which scholars believe (but cannot verify) actually occurred several years before A.D. 1, based on the biblical reference to the reign of King Herod.

And the fundamental flaw of the A.D. system was that it required reckoning dates either backward or forward from Christ’s birth, as traditionally accepted, rather than proceeding in one direction and sequence from an established starting point. Virtually none of the organized religions could agree on a historical date for the Year of Creation, known as Annus Mundi. The Byzantine Church fixed the date at 5509 B.C.E., a starting point that Greek and Russian Orthodox churches would observe until the 20th century. The Coptic Church decided on 5500 B.C.E. as its date of Creation. In 1650, un-

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The Prague Astronomical Clock & Calendar also called The Orloj installed in 1410

der the aegis of Archbishop Ussher, the Church of England decided upon 4004 B.C.E. Jewish scholars preferred 3761 B.C.E. Ultimately, how did this “reform” of the Julian calendar by Pope Gregory set with the Reformationists? They rejected it assiduously, viewing the makeover as an attempt by the despised Roman Catholic Church to deliberately deny Protestants the opportunity to celebrate Easter on the correct date. Reformationists had long considered the papal authority and the Catholic Church part of the same malignancy, so the breakaway group’s antipathy for the Gregorian calendar was hardly surprising.

Over the centuries that followed, many European lands would adopt the Gregorian calendar, however, gradually accepting its improvements as a seminal document and approach. In 1751, England finally joined them (officially in 1752) and required its colonies — the United States included — to get in step. Russia and Greece held out until the 20th century, at which point they had to lop 13 days from their calendars to make them conform with the Gregorian standard, now the world’s most widely used The seven-day week also became the international standard, though it was not always so. The Romans, for instance, observed an eight-day week until it was trimmed by a day with the introduction of the Julian calendar. According to timeanddate.com, the tradition of the seven-day week probably dates to Babylonian astrologers, who assigned their planet gods to the days of the week around 700

B.C.E. The Romans also provided the names of the days, based on astrological bodies and gods: the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. However, the English-speaking world adopted cosmological names (Monday, Sunday) and those related to Norse gods (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) and the Roman god Saturn (Saturday).

Our modern months are January (for Janus, the god of beginnings), February (for Februa, the feast of purification), March (Mars), April (possibly for Aphrodite, goddess of love), May (for Maia, the Greek goddess of spring), June (Juno, queen of the gods), July (Julius Caesar), August (Augustus Caesar), September (seventh month of the early Roman calendar), October (the eight month, Roman calendar), November (ninth month, Roman calendar) and December (10th month, Roman calendar).

Many other peoples and areas of the world have their own calendars, of course, including Muslims and Indians. Islam has a lunar calendar, with no intercalary days, and India uses a lunisolar calendar, whose leap years coincide with those of the Gregorian calendar.

In the Middle Ages, the Scandinavians held fast to their calendar, which featured two seasons: summer and winter.

For thousands of years now, calendars have played a strategic role in blocking out the every-day world we live in, providing a constant series of mileposts for where we’ve been and where we’re headed — even when the road ahead looks daunting.

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grill Shawn Green, Baseball Mensch Retired hitter now piches for support for the Israeli National Baseball team.

For a man who won’t turn 40 until Nov. 10, Shawn Green has put together an impressive life.

Retired since 2007 from Major League Baseball, where he played 15 seasons after Toronto took him in the first round in the 1991 draft, the lanky former outfielder/first baseman is now “pitching” in support of a series of qualifying games near and dear to his heart.

The 6-foot-4-inch left-handed hitter, listed among the greatest Jewish major leaguers of all time, plans to step back into the batter’s box this month (Sept. 19-23) as a member (and coach) of the Israeli team competing for a spot in the World Baseball Classic. The contests at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., will include teams from France, South Africa and Spain. Israel will play its first game Sept. 19 against the South African squad, and take on France or Spain on Sept. 21.

A player need only be eligible for citizenship in Israel to qualify for inclusion on the team. Former big league catcher Brad Ausmus will manage the Israel club. Ex-Boston Red Sox stalwart Gabe Kapler will join Green as a player-coach.

The splintery Green, a 190-pound slugger for the Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Mets, was known in the trade as a rare “five-tool” player (hitting, hitting for power, speed, fielding and throwing). He finished three homers short (at 328) of tying the legendary Hank “The Moses of Baseball” Greenberg for the most big league round-trippers by a Jewish player. Green once hit four in a game (he went 6 for 6 that day), compiling a Major League record 19 extra base hits.

Like his legendary predecessors Greenberg (Shawn’s grandfather had changed his family’s name from Greenberg to Green) and Sandy Koufax, Shawn declined to play on Yom Kippur. It was 2001. Green was at the end of a year that would see him smash the Dodgers record for home runs in a season (49). But he did not take the field that day, nor did he play on Yom Kippur in 2004.

During the course of his career, the former Tustin (Calif.) High School star, who finished third academically in his class and got a scholarship to Stanford (he attended in the off-season), donated an estimated $2 million to charity.

He spoke recently with DAVID’s Dave Cohen.

DC: Israel’s never had a WBC team

and qualifiers are this month. How are preparations going?

SG: Well, right now most of the guys are playing, you know. The minor leaguers and obviously the Major League guys are not going to be able to participate because it’s during the season for the preliminary rounds.

If we can qualify, then we will have a much bigger and deeper pool to pull from for the World Baseball Classic. But, obviously, we first have to try and win this tournament. … I think it will get more interesting as the games get closer and we start getting the team together those several days before the first competitive game.

DC: For the preliminary round games it sounds like it’ll be a mixture of Jewish former players and minor leaguers?

SG: For the initial round it’s going to be almost exclusively minor league guys, maybe a couple of college guys mixed in there, and a couple of former players like myself and Gabe Kapler.

DC: Are you excited to get back on the field?

SG: I think it’ll be fun. I am doing it for a few reasons. One is that I think it is great for Israel to start expanding baseball. It’s obviously not their top sport by any stretch. But there are a lot of Americans over there. Baseball and Judaism have a history going back to Hank Greenberg, so there is that aspect of it. The other aspect of it is having the chance to gather younger and older Jewish players, kind of almost two different generations, getting together on the same team.

It is pretty neat because we’re all going through the same experience, or are going to go through the same experience for the guys in the minor leagues that are approaching the Major League as Jewish ballplayers. Then the other aspect is getting a chance to go out and play for a couple of weeks. It’s fun after being out of the game for a few years.

If Green, Israeli star Shlomo Lipetz and their teammates do advance (other tournament qualifiers will be under way around the world), look out. Israel eventually could have a lineup including Ike Davis (Mets) at first; Ian Kinsley (Rangers) at second; Kevin Youkilis (White Sox) at third; Green, Kapler and Ryan Braun (Brewers) in the outfield; and pitchers Scott Feldman (Rangers), Jason Marquis (Padres), Craig Breslow (Diamondbacks) and John Grabow (Cubs) available for mound duty.

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