INTERVIEW

Our guest this week is someone more people should get to know: Esra Akkaya. She is a young scholar who works with texts in Ladino, English, French, and Turkish, using them to explore Sephardic culture, history, and literary heritage. We spoke with Akkaya, who is currently a Landecker Lecturer at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, about Turkish-Sephardic Jewish literature, the stories she traces through archival research, and the ways literature carries and preserves memory.

“Musicality—the cadence of words, their sounds, their poetry—is very important to me so I hope that comes through in the Turkish translation”

There´s a saying, "Be like a teapot; even when it´s up to its neck in water, it still whistles."

By Bessy ADUTWriter's NoteI recently had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Deborah M. Pratt for an upcoming episode of Searching for Goodness. ...

By Bessy ADUTJudi Uttal is a nonprofit leader, autism advocate, and former high-tech marketing executive dedicated to creating meaningful opportunitie...

By Bessy ADUTDeborah Fletcher Blum, artist, educator, and filmmaker, grew up watching foreign and independent films at her uncle's Laemmle Theaters. S...

By Bessy ADUTI was born on May 12, 1984, in a small village in Russia, surrounded by the wild beauty of nature. Raised in a large family, I was the yo...

By Bessy ADUTIntroductionIn today’s ever-evolving entertainment landscape, few creatives embody resilience and reinvention quite like Richard Tu...

By Bessy ADUTKevin Craig West, who grew up in the Arbor Hill section of Albany, NY, started his acting career as an intern with NYSTI, where he was pa...

By Bessy ADUTEditor’s IntroductionFor nearly two decades, Eric Vollweiler has worked behind the scenes producing and marketing film festivals an...

From Frau Farbissina to The Groundlings, the Emmy-nominated actress opens up about her journey, her roots, and what goodness means to her.

By Bessy ADUTHatice Aşkın is a Turkish screenwriter and director. Her debut feature, "The House with No Address", a Turkish-Greek co-production, was s...

By Bessy ADUTDr. Kirsten C. Kunkle is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Wilmington Concert Opera, the women and minority run opera company based...

By Bessy ADUTThe 20th Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival begins on Thursday, June 26, with a full week of new films. The opening night gala film is a pr...

An interview with the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival´s Director Hilary Helstein on celebrating 20 years and changing a community one film at a time...

By Bessy ADUTJoel Orloff is an animator who lives in Providence, Rhode Island. He has led animation teams for a number of award-winning documentary pr...

By Bessy ADUTOren Rudavsky is currently adapting his award-winning 2004 documentary "Hiding and Seeking" as a drama. He is working on "Remembrance of ...

“At the university, we went to towns and unions to create bulletins and popular radio stations. Another world opened up to me, very different from the one at home and from the university. And I learned to listen and my curiosity for everything that was different from me increased. I also learned to have a critical point of view” Cynthia Rimsky

By Bessy ADUT Like many of the professional athletes he photographs, Andrew D. Bernstein is recognized as an all-star in sports photography. The ...

By Bessy ADUTKaren-Eileen Gordon is an accomplished film, television, voiceover, and stage actor. Best known for her role in the HBO comedy, Curb Your...