The CJM Blog

We've rounded up our best Hanukkah gifts from The CJM Store — with picks from Executive Director Lori Starr, Chief Curator Renny Pritikin, and Store Director Kevin Grenon! From boldly colored toys to the "notoriously awaited" RGB book, there's something for everyone —so  give from the heART this year. _________________________________________________________________________________ Lori Starr, Executive Director Notorious RBG "With chapters like, 'Been In This Game For Years' and 'Your Words Just Hypnotize Me,' this charming and informative book would be a wonderful gift for any bright young woman interested in Jewish jurisprudence and the impact of RBG on our collective psyche. I recommend the 'How to Be Like RBG' appendix!" Lori Starr, Executive Director Jumbo Red Harmonica "I remember the magic of first playing a harmonica. It was so fun, and a little addictive. This one is beautifully d

Image courtesy of the writer. As a prompt for an entry on The CJM's blog, your writer was asked to consider what makes a good movie. My usual short answer to this question is that a good, nay, a GREAT movie, allows multiple ways in. If a movie's creative team is firing on all cylinders, if the movie delivers on story, performances, design, mood, music, then you've got a classic on your hands. But even a movie that falters in one of these departments can be elevated by its other elements. Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (screening Thursday at The CJM as part of the CLEAT: Cinematic Lo-fi Experiments in Art and Technology) was intended to be Aronofsky's grandest, most ambitious work yet, telling the story of lovers whose relationship spans three time periods. But the movie wound up compromised by a halved budget (from $70 million to $35) that demanded radical changes to the scope and the story. With months to make a movie that had been years in the making, t

Installation view of NEAT: New Experiments in Art and Technology . Photo by Johnna Arnold. Judaism, as it is practiced today, is not a strict biblical religion; it is a rabbinic one. That is because the Hebrew Bible is not considered a literal source to be taken on face value, but a starting point, from which flows centuries of debate among rabbis and other Jewish thinkers, leading to an evolution of understanding. Rather, it is a starting point, from which flows centuries of debate among rabbis and other Jewish thinkers that leads to the evolution of understanding. Science, too, is very much about process. Perhaps that's how science and religion can be reconciled—not as two realms that are in conflict …, but as things you do. Science is about creating hypotheses and testing data against these theories. Judaism is about how we act to improve this world, here and now. And these processes can easily go hand in hand. [1] In short, for Judaism there is no essential conflict betwe