Judaism & Jewish Culture

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

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

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

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

Actor Bruno Ganz and director Oliver Hirschbiegel's new film is Downfall, about the last days of Hitler. Ganz stars as Adolf Hitler. He's made over 80 films mostly in German, and was in the recent remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Downfall is Hirschbiegel's third film, and his most popular to date.

Author Saul Bellow died April 5 at the age of 89. His short stories and novels garnered him three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Presidential Award and a Nobel Prize. His books include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog and Humbolt's Gift. (Originally aired Oct. 4, 1989.)

Laurence Rees' Auschwitz: A New History provides details about the inner workings of the camp: techniques of mass murder, the politics, the gossip mill between guards and prisoners, and the camp brothel.

It might surprise you to learn that a Los Angeles rabbi, Yaacov Deyo, invented Speed Dating -- a rapid-fire courtship concept in which singles spend just a few minutes getting to know each other. It started as a way to help Jewish singles meet each other, but it's spread beyond the Jewish community.

Adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel, the film follows a young man trying to decipher family history. Elijah Wood plays the fictional Foer, who traces his grandfather's life in a Ukrainian village.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth has been a favorite of readers since his memoir Goodbye, Columbus emerged to help define the culture of postwar America. Now the Library of America is releasing Roth's books — a rare step for a living author.

Leisure suits, big hair and the Bee Gees are just part of the draw of a new book, Bar Mitzvah Disco. With essays from Jonathan Safran Foer, Sarah Silverman and others, the book documents bar and bat mitzvahs from the 1970s through the '90s.

A new tactic has emerged in the angry debate over cartoons depicting religious figures, as an Israeli artist launches a contest for the best anti-Semitic cartoon -- drawn by a Jew. Amitai Sandy says the Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest is a response to an Iranian newspaper's competition for cartoons on the Holocaust.

The musical band What I Like About Jew started out as a tongue-in-cheek cabaret act that sold out at New York venues such as The Knitting Factory and Fez. Now, the two-man act has a new CD, Unorthodox.

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg is a key figure in the Bay Area improvisational scene, where he became known in the early 1990s as a member of the New Klezmer Trio.

In The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, author Daniel Mendelsohn unearths and reconstructs the lives of six people in his family who died in the Holocaust. Maureen Corrigan has a book review.

Richard Gilman, who died Saturday at age 83, was a writer and professor at the Yale School of Drama. Ben Brantley of The New York Times writes, "Mr. Gilman was one of a breed of philosopher-critics... who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. They located in modern drama the elements of abstraction, alienation and absurdity that had long been at the core of discussions of other forms of art and literature." In this archive interview from 1987, Gilman recounts his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism and then to atheism.

Daniel Mendelsohn's new book is The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. As a child, his old Jewish relatives told stories of family members killed in the Holocaust. Mendelsohn undertook a worldwide search for surviving members of his family's town. During his investigation, Mendelsohn discovered letters from the family begging their relatives in the United States to help them get out of their Ukrainian town.

Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His new book, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, is about the Arabs who protected or aided Jews in North Africa during World War II.

Writer Stefan Kanfer. His new book is “Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America.” It’s about the glory days of Yiddish theater in the late 19th and early 20th century. Kanfer was a writer and editor at Time magazine for 20 years and is the author of many books including biographies of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx.

Journalist Jody Rosen. He’s put together an album called “Jewface” (Reboot Stereophonic Records). It’s the first anthology of Jewish minstrel songs. Tracks include “Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars,” “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” and other long lost hits from the vaudeville stage of the early 20th century. Rosen is the music critic for Slate.com and also writes for The Nation. He’s the author of the book “White Christmas: The Story of an American Song.”

Guest host Dave Davies interviews Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland — and a New York native. He moved to Warsaw in 1990 to help rebuild Jewish communities there. It was a homecoming of sorts: Schudrich's grandparents emigrated from Poland before World War II.