Oliver Pollak
Oliver B. Pollak is a freelance writer in Richmond. He may be contacted via oliver.pollak@sdjewishworld.com
Downsizing generations of family photos
I owned a Kodak Brownie, 16 mm Minox, Petri, Minolta, film in a box, Cannon and a Polaroid. Karen had an Olympus and a Fuji. Between us we have owned three Cannons. Fabled German...
Following up a 101-year-old tragedy
The 1918-1919 “flu” epidemic took between 2,800 and 7,500 Nebraska lives, 974 of them in Omaha. On July 4, 1919, the weekly Omaha Jewish Bulletin published “Breaking Lives and Homes for Profit.”
It read:
Fanny Skulke came with...
Books, Internet tell of plagues through history
I am sheltering in place. The health departments of the six Bay Area Counties have ordered stringent social distancing to protect all of us, seniors included. I’m more than a bit of a nut...
Book Review: ‘Jews in Medicine’
Jews in Medicine, Contributions to Health and Healing through the Age by Ronald L. Eisenberg Jerusalem and New York: Urim Publications, 2019, 464 pages, $29.12
This 464-page encyclopedic reference book starts with the Talmud and...
A pair of Polish films at S.F. Jewish film festival
What do you get when you have two films: a husband with a wife from Paris who wants to bury her one-year-old son’s foreskin in Poland; and a brother and a sister from Toronto...
Nazi, Soviet literature profit centers for bookseller
The New York Times reported on February 7, 2019 about a court decision in which the Austrian government has to pay a property owner in Braunau, a town of about 16,000 people in upper Austria, $1.7...
Obituaries and the Greatest Generation
Holocaust Survivors are our Greatest Generation. Their resilience and immigrant contribution to American life is formidable and compelling. The Bay Area is home to between 210,000, and 350,000 Jews. During 2018, the biweekly J of Northern...
![Allentown Morning Call Newspapers [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://jewishwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/1918_-_Impromptu_Allentown_Armistice_Day_Parade-324x235.jpg "A birthday between Kristalnacht and Armistice Day")
A birthday between Kristalnacht and Armistice Day
Some people are born on days coterminous with holidays like the 4th of July, Christmas and even New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Others are born on Mother’s Day or Thanksgiving that are Sundays...
How we choose the books we read
We come to the books we read from many directions. It could be newspaper and magazine reviews, suggestions from trusted friends, NPR reviews, looking at bookstore recent arrivals, ‘the book club is now reading,’...
Amazon Prime series has Tikkun Olam theme
Amazon Prime has started running a Canadian comedy drama series set in Toronto. Erica Strange, a thirty-two-year-old single, plucky and career frustrated, is played by Erin Karpluk and her middle age time traveling therapist,...