San Francisco

Last week, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research revealed nearly 80 documents showing that Otto Frank, the father of the world’s most famous diarist, Anne Frank, attempted in 1941 to emigrate his entire family from Holland to America.
 

San Francisco — In its effort to elevate the issue of energy independence, the venerable American Jewish Committee has pushed for policy change in Washington, “greened” its own New York headquarters and even offered cash incentives for its employees to buy hybrid cars.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The Jewish groups who liked John Paul Stevens as a Supreme Court justice are getting ready to dish out the same like to whomever replaces him.

Most of the Jewish groups closely tracking court decisions favor Stevens' liberal record, with minor qualifications, and do not believe that President Obama will choose a replacement who deviates from the norm.

Joshua Venture Group, the newly re-launched fellowship that trains Jewish social entrepreneurs, announced its 2010-2012 cohort of eight fellows on Monday. Each of the Dual Investment Program fellows will receive $40,000 in “seed funding” per year over the course of a two-year period, as well as $20,000 in health benefits, in addition to individual coaching and organizational support.

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- The University of California Board of Regents addressed the recent spate of hate violence and racist vandalism at its campuses by announcing a series of measures designed to monitor and prevent hate violence in the university system.

The Museum of Modern Art’s new retrospective of the work of the South African artist William Kentridge is organized around five themes. “Themes” is something of a misnomer, though, since the five sections of the show coalesce around what might more accurately be described as “distinct bodies of work.” Either way, several themes (and certainly more than five) recur in many sections, with at least one being very hard to ignore: Jewishness, an omnipresent feature throughout Kentridge’s oeuvre.

Growing up was never easy for copper-skinned Rebecca Walker, the trophy baby of a new America. Born in 1969, the “Movement Child” of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and activist Alice Walker and civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal, Walker spent the first two decades of her life failing to fit into a country that still assumes fixed racial categories.

The Times Square tower where Conde Nast pumps out titles like The New Yorker and Vogue is a river away from Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where Jennifer Bleyer lives. It's a boundary that Bleyer is making very clear.

The third issue of Heeb, Bleyer's year-old magazine, hits the streets later this month with a striking disclaimer: "Please note that this is not a f-ing Conde Nast publication. It is a tiny independent venture, publishing by the skin of its teeth about twice a year on nothing that even resembles a schedule. Thank you for your patience."

The lineup for New York's newest blockbuster art exhibition begins this week as lucky ticket holders for "Matisse Picasso" make their way to the Museum of Modern Art's temporary digs in Long Island City. The retrospective exhibition promises to reward long waits in chilly winds with works that shaped modern art and a thrilling tale of one of the most creative rivalries in art history. Elsewhere in Queens, a different kind of thrill awaits viewers in an exhibition that offers a glimpse of art's future.

Several years ago Dan Wolf, a San Francisco-based musician, writer, rapper and performer, discovered that he was the heir to a Vaudeville tune called “Tuedelband,” the signature song of the city of Hamburg. The song is so famous that it starts off the classic 1981 German film “Das Boot,” and is still sung at soccer games. A documentary called “The Return of the Tuedelband” was even made in Germany about Dan Wolf’s return to Germany to learn more about his family, and its cultural legacy.