We all know the answer to the old question, “how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” is to “practice, practice, practice.” But the Israel Chamber Project has also gotten there by cultivating an appreciative New York audience in the four years since the ensemble’s inception.

“It’s the right time for a Carnegie Hall debut,” the group’s executive director, pianist Assaff Weisman, told The Arty Semite about the performance scheduled for February 1. “It feels in some way like an arrival… there is nothing quite like a Carnegie Hall debut to solidify your reputation.”

ICP, an ensemble of eight accomplished Israeli musicians in their 20s and 30s, has gained the interest of chamber music fans in Israel, Europe and the U.S. The group comes together several times annually for intensive tours and concerts at prestigious venues like Symphony Space and The Colburn School’s Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. Recently they also recorded their first CD, which is forthcoming.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

King Abdullah of Jordan

Never mind putting on your game face. Put on your baby face, instead — that is, if you want your opponent in peace negotiations to accept your overtures.

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have found that enemies have an easier time gaining our trust if they have what is colloquially referred to as a “baby face.” They found this out by subtly changing the features of fictional politicians’ faces to look more baby-like. The study, authored by Dr. Ifat Maoz, Associate Professor in the Noah Mozes Department of Communication and Journalism and Head of the Smart Family Institute of Communications, reported that Jewish-Israeli subjects in the experiment were more likely to accept a particular peace proposal from a baby-faced fictional Palestinian politician than they were to accept the very same offer from a more mature-looking one.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Not long after we heard that Demi Moore had dropped out of the role as Gloria Steinem in the upcoming Linda Lovelace biopic, word came that Sarah Jessica Parker would be replacing her.

It is unfortunate that Moore’s personal situation is difficult right now, but the Shmooze bets that SJP will make an even better feminist icon. After all, didn’t she did play the unmistakably liberated Carrie Bradshaw for years on “Sex in the City”? The series wasn’t quite “Deep Throat,” if you know what we mean, but we are sure Parker will be able to handle playing her part in the porn star’s life story.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

The Ladovskys in front of United Bakers Dairy Restaurant in 1920

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s perhaps a cliché, but it is true of Toronto’s United Bakers Dairy Restaurant, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. While the menu of this, the oldest family restaurant in the city, has changed with the times, it has also remained faithful to the dishes that attracted its first customers in 1912.

“Young people like old food,” posited Philip Ladovsky, who co-owns the restaurant with his sister, Ruthie, as a main reason for the restaurant’s longevity. As a reporter for The Jew and the Carrot sat down with the siblings over a bowl of United Bakers’ famous beet borscht and a boiled potato, they recounted how the business got started and reflected on the food that brings approximately 1,000 patrons — many of them regulars — through the door every day. They believe that it is their menu’s balance between traditional “dorfishe cooking” (Middle and Eastern European country cuisine) and current standard family restaurant fare, along with the famous Ladovsky hospitality, that has kept United Bakers going strong for three generations.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Natalie Mashiah next to her damaged car

A 27-year-old woman was attacked last week while she was hanging posters on behalf of her employer. Natali Mashiah was in the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood when she alleges that a group of Haredi men called her a “slut,” a “shiksa,” and smashed her car’s windshield and windows while she was inside of it. They also threw a rock at her head, punctured the tires and poured bleach inside the vehicle, she said. Police arrested three suspects at the scene.

The financial newspaper Globes is asking why social justice protest leader Stav Shaffir, recently profiled in the Forward, reportedly accepted VIP perks, such as accommodations at a 5-star hotel and an chauffeured Audi, while recently in Munich for a conference.

Knesset State Control Committee chairman Ronnie Bar-On is calling for broader implementation by rabbinical courts of a law that allows rabbinical judges to impose punitive sanctions on men who refuse to give their wife a Jewish divorce document, or a get.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller in 1986.

Life moves pretty fast: It seems like just yesterday that Ferris Bueller was taking the day off. But, believe it or not, that was already 26 years ago. And now the righteous dude is back, but it’s not clear yet what he is up to this time.

A teaser video released on Thursday indicates that Matthew Broderick, now 49, will be reprising his role as Bueller in a Superbowl ad. What product will he be hocking? It’s impossible to tell from the very short snippet shown. All we see is a middle-aged Bueller/Broderick, looking bleary-eyed and wearing a white terrycloth robe, opening the curtains on a window. His one line, “How can I handle work on a day like today?” brings back memories, but isn’t too revealing.

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©2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Demi Moore has been having a rough time lately.

First came the announcement of her split with husband Ashton Kutcher. Then, earlier this week, she checked into rehab to overcome her exhaustion and alleged addictions to nitrous oxide and Red Bull. Now word is that we can no longer expect to see her playing feminist icon Gloria Steinem on the big screen.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Fuad Haba at the taboon

Septuagenarian Fuad Haba was a long way from his birthplace of Iraq and his family’s famous bakery on Agrippas Street in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market as he made laffa bread in a taboon oven in suburban Toronto. But neither he nor the customers at the new Dr. Laffa restaurant, where the retiree is hard at work, seemed to be deterred by the freezing weather on a recent wintery night.

Fuad was in Toronto helping his son Sasi and Sasi’s business partner Yoram Gabay with their new venture, which brings the tastes, smells and atmosphere of the shuk to an unsuspecting location tucked inside a business park northwest of the city’s main Jewish neighborhoods along the Bathurst Street corridor. The kosher restaurant offers all the typical Israeli (meat) comfort foods, but it is the delicious, fresh laffa — a full foot in diameter — that is its biggest draw.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Sandler and Barrymore in 2005

Is it any surprise that, after going out on fifty first dates with Adam Sandler and also falling for him as a wedding singer, Drew Barrymore would say that she is close to her co-star? Of course, not. However, it’s one thing to look to a co-star for friendship and acting advice — or even romantic companionship — and entirely another to seek his services as a religious conversion coach.

But that is exactly what Barrymore is doing, according to In Touch weekly. The gossip magazine reports that Sandler, of “Hanukkah Song” fame, is guiding Barrymore, 36, in her conversion to Judaism as she prepares for her upcoming marriage to her Jewish fiancé, Will Kopelman, a 34-year-old art consultant. Let’s just hope that Sandler knows more about Judaism than how to rhyme yarmulke with Hanukkah and menorah with Dinah Shore-ah.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Sixth formers (high school seniors) at JFS, the oldest and largest Jewish day school in England, are being taught that homosexuality can be cured. At least, that is how some students, parents and community leaders understand the inclusion of information about JONAH — Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (an American organization that maintains that homosexuality can be “mitigated and potentially eliminated”) — in a Jewish text class on homosexuality and the Orthodox viewpoint.

Complaints have been lodged with the school’s administration, contending either that introducing the notion of gay “conversion” is offensive, or that at the very least, opposing views to those of JONAH should be included in the class. Material from or mention of Keshet UK, the LGBT forum, were reportedly not part of the course of study.

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© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.