Jewish

Although it shares industrial DNA with "Entourage" -- some executive producers, a network -- and concerns young men who go to parties and clubs, "How to Make It in America," premiering Sunday on HBO, is a different kettle of testosterone. There is more estrogen in the mix, for one thing. As the title suggests, success is something that will come to its characters after a time. Vincent Chase and his Hollywood pals might be high-fiving or fist-bumping or whatever it is the kids do now over the luxurious goods and services that adorn their celebrity, but it only takes a couple of cafes con leche to make Cam (Victor Rasuk)

"What's the difference between Jewish and Chinese mah jong?" the protagonist of Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" asks her mother about the quintessential Chinese game. Her mother replies, "Entirely different kind of playing.... Jewish mah jong, they watch only for their own tile, play only with their eyes. " "Project Mah Jongg," a colorful exhibition opening Thursday (through Sept. 2) at the Skirball Cultural Center, tells the Jewish side of the story. With vintage photographs, souvenirs, playing guides and other ephemera, and of course examples of the tiles themselves, the exhibition traces how the game was enthusiastically adopted and integrated into the social life of Jewish women in the 20th century.

When Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat took office 18 months ago, he was heralded as a secular, progressive high-tech entrepreneur who would apply his business savvy to modernizing the ancient city, particularly after five years under an ultra-Orthodox leader. Barkat hired the same consultants as Disney for advice about crowd management and stood up to ultra-Orthodox demonstrators who demanded that he close city parking lots on the Sabbath. Already a multimillionaire, the 50-year-old mayor refused his government salary and spoke often about finding "win-win" compromises and burnishing Jerusalem's "brand."

BUDAPEST, Hungary - American coffeehouses are prized for their quick service and fast Internet - ideal for people on the go. But a century ago, European cafes were places to linger amid Gilded Age opulence. Nowhere was this more so than in Budapest, where some of its great historic cafes have survived economic crises, war and Communism. My wife, Rachel, and my mother-in-law, Edie, had never been to Hungary, but they had been hearing about Budapest and its grand avenues, delicious pastries and vibrant Jewish community all their lives: Edie's parents were born here in the 1890s.

Help me understand this: Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz, director of the "anti-missionary" (whatever that means) group Jews for Judaism, has been sending "alerts" to Jewish congregations warning that the producers of the play "Mendel & Moses," in which Jesus isn't mentioned, "are doing something deceptive" (like what?) because they are Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah (Theater Notes, Aug. 3). Would he be as upset if he found out they were atheists? Others appear to be concerned that a character in the play is a literal devil.

Bob Dylan's decision to put out a Christmas album this year caught a lot of people by surprise. It wasn't just that the preeminent songwriter of the rock era had chosen to record secular seasonal staples such as "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus" for his "Christmas in the Heart" collection. Equally intriguing was that the musician born Robert Zimmerman and raised in a Jewish household also included exceptionally sincere versions of such quintessentially Christian carols as "Hark!

Although Erla Feinberg's final act might have disappointed most of her grandchildren, it carried out her late husband's dying wish in a way that held up in court. In a unanimous decision, the Illinois Supreme Court this week ruled that Max Feinberg and his wife could legally disinherit any grandchildren who married outside the Jewish faith as long as the method of doing so did not encourage divorce. "Although those plans might be offensive to individual family members or to outside observers, Max and Erla were free to distribute their bounty as they saw fit and to favor grandchildren of whose life choices they approved," Justice Rita Garman wrote.

Concerning your article ["Honoring Hebrew Hoopsters," by Gary Goldstein, Nov. 9], which makes note that the first great basketball players were of the Jewish faith, let me upgrade your information on this subject. I and five others of the Jewish faith, who played basketball for the YMHA in Montreal, played on the Canadian Olympic basketball team in London in 1948. We had lost the Canadian Championship in 1948 to the British Columbia team, but beat them in Toronto in a four-team round-robin, which determined that YMHA team was the lead half of the London team.

I am part of the staff at Gan Israel Pre-School of Chabad of the Valley and belong to the local Jewish community. I noticed in Bob Pool's article of Dec. 19 that he made no mention of the St. Paul United Methodist Church just two doors down from our school. Why are only Saturday worshipers a bother who disturb the neighbors, and Sunday worshipers are not? The church also has a nursery school on its premises and has been there for many years. Why doesn't its nursery school disturb the neighbors?

As a member of the lay leadership in the Long Beach/West Orange County Jewish community, I found Joel Kotkin's treatise concerning "Paradise Reconsidered" (Opinion, July 26) and the Los Angeles Jewish community very informative. Kotkin forgot to mention three very important items, however. One is the fact that the majority of people in the Jewish community were as incensed as the Afro-American community when they witnessed the TV news film of the beating of Rodney King. Second, the Jewish community was equally shocked and disturbed by the verdicts received by the police officers involved.

AmaWaterways' cruise and land tour highlights Jewish heritage in five countries along the Danube River. Synagogues in Budapest and Prague, Oscar Schindler's home in Germany, the setting for “The Sound of Music” in Austria and the site of the Nuremberg war-crimes trials are some of the highlights of the 13-night trip. It begins with two days touring Budapest before embarking on the small-ship river cruise for seven days. Participants will meet Rabbi Chatam Sofer and tour Bratislava in Slovakia, visit the Jewish Museum and Sigmund Freud's House in Vienna, and stop in Regensburg at Schindler's house and Nuremberg in Germany before ending with three nights in Prague.

David Treuer never planned on writing nonfiction. "I was happy working on my novels," the fiction writer and USC professor says over the phone from Ann Arbor, where he is visiting the University of Michigan to talk about his new book, "Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life" (Grove: 330 pp., $26). "But after the Red Lake shooting in 2005" - in which a 16-year-old named Jeffrey James Weise went on a shooting spree at a school on Minnesota's Red Lake Reservation - "I became upset and frustrated with the coverage.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Online shopping discounts - Two men have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms after they were convicted of several crimes related to an online shopping club. James A. Sweeney II and Patrick M. Ryan were convicted of numerous charges of grand theft and securities fraud involving a Riverside company called Big Co-Op Inc., which claimed to offer rebates and discounts to online shoppers. Prosecutors had accused the pair of selling worthless private stock in the company, which they claimed was turning huge profits and about to make an initial public offering.

Tempers flared at Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday when a councilman said he was tempted to "clock" a speaker who called out "Heil Hitler" during a public comment period. The spat began when political gadfly Michael Carreon stood up during the City Council meeting to talk about problems in the 14th Council District, where he lives. When Carreon turned his attention to several council members who he said weren't paying attention, Councilman Tom LaBonge, who was chairing the meeting, stopped him. LaBonge instructed Carreon not to address his comments to specific members, as per city rules.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Elan Steinberg preferred to keep his family history private. But the fierce strategist and former leader of the World Jewish Congress was clearly motivated by it, according to observers, as he relentlessly pushed to obtain restitution for Holocaust survivors and strove to expose the Nazi past of former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. Steinberg, 59, died Friday in New York after a brief struggle with cancer, said Menachem Rosensaft, a vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.

JERUSALEM - Israel's government is scrambling to find ways to save some of the unauthorized West Bank settlements it once promised to dismantle, including some that are built partly on private Palestinian land. The new strategy seeks to retroactively legalize some outposts and, in other cases, relocate Jewish settlers to nearby land that is not privately owned, in effect creating what critics say would be the first new West Bank settlements in years. The approach by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government appears designed to avoid the need to carry out high-profile military evictions of settlers in order to appease conservative lawmakers, who have accused Netanyahu of betraying the settlers' cause.

The picture you published of the Jewish children before their execution broke my heart ("Testament to the Holocaust's Lessons," April 10). The little girl in front crying, did she know her fate? If they had lived, perhaps one would have discovered a cure for some terrible disease; or perhaps one would have been a world-renowned poet. We will never know. And the little girl turned sideways. Who does she remind me of? Oh, I know, she reminds me of me. We Jews will never forget, but will the rest of you remember?

Thank you for your article on how Jews are portrayed in movies. It is a thoughtful piece. However, Lewis Beale describes Paul Newman as "half Jewish." Judaism is a religion, not an ethnic group or race. No one can be "half Jewish". My father was Catholic. Does this make me "half Catholic"? Nancy Hoover Apple Valley -- On the one hand, Lewis Beale states that the more or less complete assimilation of certain male Jewish film and TV characters is sometimes felt to be "particularly empowering because their religion is essentially irrelevant."

In his mind's eye, Rob Adler Peckerar is sitting with his students on a doorstep in the bustling heart of Eastern Europe. They are in a town, perhaps in Lithuania, perhaps Ukraine. It is summer, and a warm breeze rustles the trees. The students listen, spellbound, to a story written on this very spot a century or more ago in a language that is foreign and yet strangely familiar. And before them, the pre-Holocaust world of Eastern European Jews flickers for a moment to life - rich, lusty, funny, sad and achingly poignant.

Two French police officers were shot and injured Wednesday in a standoff with a man claiming to be a member of Al Qaeda and suspected of killing seven people, including a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school. Officials said the standoff at an apartment in Toulouse began at 3 a.m. local time when police from an elite armed unit surrounded a building in a residential area of the city less than 48 hours after a gunman attacked the school, killing four people.  An explosion was heard from the apartment building early Wednesday morning.