By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News The best actors and actresses become one and the same with their parts, allowing their audience to see no distinction between often-powerful off-stage-or-screen personalities and their characters….
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By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News Starting young in his passion, Dr. Justin Gordon seems the ideal man to put a fresh take on a well-documented, overriding event like the Holocaust. At age…
By David Harris, Special to Chicago Jewish News I am a forgotten Jew. My roots are nearly 2,600 years old, my ancestors made landmark contributions to world civilization, and my presence was felt from North Africa…
By Ben Sales, JTA On the morning of June 5, 1967, as Arab armies and Israel clashed following weeks of tension, Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg sat anxious amid his congregants at daily prayers — fearful that…
By David Caplan, Special to Chicago Jewish News On a sunny spring morning in 1973, I was standing at a bus stop in the city of Hadera with my grandfather’s half-brother Shepsel. Shepke, as he was…
By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News Lauren Rabin did not need the proverbial “five years’ experience,” as grandfather Joseph Rabin once predicted, to find her calling and help others. Rabin had just turned 24…
By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News Daniel Friedman calls his father, who has the same name as his, “The King of Chicago.” But Dad was no mayor, gangster or leader of a six-time…
By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News Even separated by thousands of miles via the phone connection, the Rev. Patrick Desbois does not come across simply as a man of the cloth, driven by…
By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News In an upstairs booth of his Gino’s East restaurant off the Magnificent Mile, Ivan Himmel sampled his new line of kosher pizza, the preferred crust melding seamlessly…
By George Castle, Special to Chicago Jewish News Part of an artist’s sensibility is to leave interpretation of his work in the eye of the beholder, to see beauty or otherwise. So when a visitor to…