Jewish ‘thank you’ story resonates across time
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — I wasn’t searching specifically for this story, and I did not know the reporter’s byline until recently, but while surfing the internet last week for some news about...
View ArticleA sad story of a mentally disturbed vandal
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –I’ve lived in a few countries overseas in my life, and one of the places that has made a big impression on me was Italy. Several things happened there that I remember...
View ArticleA ‘Molotov!’ heard round the world
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Not only is the Hannukah menorah going to light up with brilliance this month, but Twitter has also lit up with some hilarious Hannukah humor. “I plan to start saying...
View ArticleMapmaker keeps up with territorial conflicts
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Evan Centanni makes maps. Global maps, regional maps, geopolitical maps, Middle East maps, conflict maps. trouble-spot maps. Based inthe American Northwest, Centanni...
View ArticleWill ‘cli-fi’ heat up Hollywood in 2015?
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — It’s winter in some parts of the world, and summer in other regions, and even in America the temperatures vary widely from Alaska to Florida. It might be pouring...
View ArticleA Yiddish guide to climate change
Editor’s note: Dan Bloom often uses humor to try to make a point about serious issues such as climate change and global warming. Here he mines a few treasured Yiddish words and phrases to write an oped...
View ArticleRabbi fears climate disaster by end of century
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –When Jeffrey Newman first arrived as the rabbi at Finchley Reform Synagogue in Britain in 1973, he, by his own self-description, was an idealist. And while he knew...
View ArticleWould this movie idea get to first base?
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — In the past few years that I have been lucky enough to have this Internet gig as an occasional columnist for this online newspaper in California, and always under the...
View ArticleA young poet finds her voice
Editor’s Note: The following column was written in response to a poem included in a previous San Diego Jewish World story written by Eileen Wingard: Here’s a link to the poem that caught my eye....
View ArticleA Hebrew primer on sun bathing
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –I’m on the email line with Paddy Hernon in Canada, and he’s giving me a brief introductory-level tutorial on the Hebrew language. As a teenager in the early 1960s,...
View ArticleHouse Chamber should display horizontal flag
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — I was born in America and I love America. But living overseas for over 20 years has shown me that America does not always get it right, in terms of international PR....
View ArticleThe Passover seder and climate change questions
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Rori Shay’s first book, Elected is a Young Adult (YA) genre sci-fi/cli-fi hybrid novel, part of a projected trilogy she is writing, and it’s being followed up with a...
View ArticleNovelist whets ‘Water Knife’ to forecast drought wars
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Although the Hebrew holy books, from the Five Books of Moses to the Torah, are not “science fiction” tracts, they do contain some out-of-this-world stories that...
View ArticleEarly baseball cards painted by little Moishe
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — I get mail almost every day, but not a lot of mail, just enough mail. While some people tell me they get over 100 emails a day and are swamped with correspondence, I...
View ArticleBarack Obama provided the lyrics of this song
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –Quite a few Jewish songwriters have written famous Christmas songs that America listens to year after year. And taking my cue from them, I recently tried my hand at...
View ArticleSDJW humor column up to date in Kansas City
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — No sooner was the ink dry on a recent column here at the San Diego Jewish World about President Obama’s NASCAR-related remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast...
View Article‘Cli-fi’ in the classroom
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan – In the usual way I meet most people these days, I met Elizabeth (Berg ) Trobaugh the other day via an email she sent me from her office in western Massachusetts where...
View ArticleU.S. colleges are developing ‘cli-fi’ curricula
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — One of my mentors in the world of sci-fi literature is the famous SF novelist David Brin, who I first met a few years ago here at San Diego Jewish World (and who is...
View ArticleAs David Brin might say, Cli- Fi tide rising
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Whenever a new literary genre comes of age, when its time arrives, it signals a small shift in public awareness. Before sci-fi arrived on the scene in the 1920s, via...
View ArticleA tale of two Holocaust survivors
By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Peter Kubicek is an email friend of mine who I have known for about ten years now. He lives in New York and I live in Taiwan but we meet often online to chat about...
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