This past December, Hollywood launched a new movie, "JFK". The movie presented the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, as a huge conspiracy backed by the Mafia, Cuban exiles, and secret intelligence agents of different countries. At this time there is a controversy condemning the film as misrepresenting the assassination, elevating rumor to fact, mixing real and fake footage.

At a fireman's convention the fire chiefs told stories about their men's heroism in fighting fires. Afterwards a veteran fireman asked "Why are we running to put out fires, when we should be really looking for the arsonist who is starting them?" Sure enough, an investigation led to an arsonist and the fires abated.

Alert! Alert! Special message to earthlings. You can become what you'd like to be. Fly to Neverland and never become old; retain your childhood friends and live within the innocence of childhood. Sounds like Peter Pan, you say, but, no, it's really Michael Jackson. His ranch is called, "Neverland Ranch." His adulthood is clouded in childhood. I don't know about him flying but, somehow, he doesn't look like the Captain EO anymore. At the NAACP Image Awards, Jackson told his worshipping audience, "I am innocent and I know that the truth will be my salvation."

The on-going debate about whether pornography is art came home with the arrival of the long awaited over-sized book, "Sex by Madonna" priced at $49.95 and packed in a mylar bag marked, "Adults Only." One hundred fifty thousand copies were sold. The first day's sales made Warner Books happy but left eager customers disappointed. There simply were not enough books available. The Sunday, November 22nd, "New York Times Book Review" lists the book as the number one best seller for the past three weeks.

Magic Johnson's message of, "Here I am saying it can happen to anybody, even me," has reopened Pandora's box. Our schools all across the country are fiercely debating the virtue of "condom distribution." Proponents claim that the only way to stem the HIV infection epidemic is to teach the children through condom availability and distribution. No matter how much straight talk we give to the students, HIV will affect them and we must protect them as early as possible.

One of my congregants, a young Israeli mother of four children, was sitting in a Carson theater watching the movie, Schindler's List. During a scene where a Nazi was shooting Jews, people sitting next to her were laughing hysterically. She was so disturbed that she called me complaining of insensitivity. I tried to explain that this may be a rare incident. However, I was wrong.

January 8,1993 will go down in history as the biggest commemorative stamp sale ever held by the United States Postal Service. It is the day that the immortal king of rock, Elvis Presley, went public. His now famous smile printed on the 29 cent stamp was snatched up by hungry fans.

When a 20 year old movie opens on 2,100 screens and becomes a weekend sellout, attention should be given to the film. There must be a message somewhere out there. $35.9 million is a very high amount to be spent on an "old movie." Why do we spend so much money for viewing something that has been available on home video for years? What attraction and message are out there in space?

In a recent film depicting Hassidic Jews, A Stranger Among Us, director Sidney Lumet gives us a rare view of how the Hasidim of Brooklyn live. This 200 year old group represents a special and unique branch of orthodox Judaism which is rarely seen in a Hollywood film. The movie offers an opportunity for the public to understand this unique group of people. As the saying goes, we now get the inside story.

The film year ended with a new movie directed by Steven Spielberg called, Schindler's List. The footage was shot almost completely in black and white, giving it a feeling of a documentary. The film's story tells about Oskar Schindler, a failed businessman, who decided to travel to Krakow, Poland in 1939. His move to Krakow was simply to strike it rich at the expense of others. Schindler buys a Jewish factory that produces items for the war effort.