Schlessinger to Talk at Jewish Book Festival

A nine-day Jewish book festival beginning tonight features several authors currently or recently on bestseller lists--including radio talk show moralist Laura Schlessinger, who says she is undaunted by her failure to keep 23-year-old nude photos of her off the Internet.

Schlessinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel will discuss their book on the Ten Commandments at Vogel’s Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills on Thursday night as a part of the San Fernando Valley area festival called “People of the Book.”

The co-authors will do the same Sunday in San Diego at another Jewish book fair in that city.

The sharp-tongued star of the nationally syndicated “Dr. Laura” show has not cut back on her personal appearances, said a spokeswoman at Schlessinger’s studio in Sherman Oaks.

In a recent statement, Schlessinger, who lives in Hidden Hills, said it was “morally reprehensible” for former mentor-lover Bill Ballance to sell those photos to a sex-oriented Internet site. She said she was her “own moral authority” at age 28. “I have undergone profound changes [in] . . . my journey from atheist to observant Jew,” she said.

Other festival authors with less celebrity than Schlessinger, but with comparable success in book sales, include Naomi Levy, Jonathan Kirsch and Thomas Cahill.

Levy’s “To Begin Again,” a personal story of tragedy and faith, was No. 2 on the Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List on Sunday and Kirsch’s “Moses: A Life” was No. 13. Levy, a Southern California rabbi, will speak at 1 p.m. Friday at the Jewish Community Center in West Hills and Kirsch, a Times book critic, will speak at the same facility at 8 p.m. next Saturday.

“The Gifts of the Jews” by Cahill spent many weeks on bestseller lists earlier this year. Cahill, also author of “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” will speak at the West Hills center at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

This is the second year for the Valley-centered Jewish book festival, which coordinator Seville Porush said attracted nearly 5,000 people last year when it was under the auspices of several Jewish organizations. This year the event is run solely by the Jewish Community Centers, of which four are located in the Valley.

The only session today has Dvorah Telushkin, author of “Master of Dreams,” discussing her memoir of 12 years as assistant, editor and translator for the late Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer. Admission to her 8 p.m. talk at the Jewish Community Center in West Hills is $15.

The most unusual seminar in the festival may be the video showing of an “X-Files” episode written by a onetime executive producer for the television program, Howard Gordon. The episode utilizes Hasidic lore and speculation about a golem, a dangerous monster in Jewish mythology. Gordon will discuss his story at 4 p.m. Sunday at the West Hills center.

Conventional religious themes are not ignored. Four rabbis from Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist traditions will discuss “Preserving Judaism in the Next Millennium” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Stephen S. Wise Temple atop Sepulveda Pass.

Admission to festival sessions ranges from free to a high of $25 for the Schlessinger-Vogel appearance. For further information, call (818) 464-3353.

Coincidentally, though not part of the Jewish Book Festival, Leon Wieseltier, author of the critically acclaimed “Kaddish” and a literary critic for New Republic magazine, will speak on three days, starting Friday night, at Sinai Temple in Westwood as a scholar in residence.