For the sixth consecutive year, Craig Taubman and Craig ‘N Co. have published “Jewels of Elul,” a collection of stories and anecdotes for the High Holy Days. Many individuals, one for each of the 29 days of the month of Elul, contributed to this year’s theme, “The Art of Beginning.... Again,” for Volume VI.

Jewel contributors include Lady Gaga, Marshall Herskovitz, Rabbi’s Shlomo Riskin and David Wolpe, boxer Yuri Foreman, and philanthropists Eli Broad and Noah Alper.

This year’s Jewels of Elul will benefit the work of Beit T’Shuvah, a residential drug treatment facility in Los Angeles, Calif. To order Jewels of Elul booklets, write to Jewels of Elul, POB 6061-115, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423. To receive a “Jewel a Day,” visit www.jewelsofelul.com.

Frank O. Gehry, Fish Lamp, 1990, glass and silicone with glass and wood base. The Jewish Museum

“Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry” opens at The Jewish Museum on Sunday, Aug. 29. The exhibition brings together playful, whimsical, and sculptural artworks in a selection of colorful lamps designed by architect Frank Gehry. The exhibit runs through Oct. 31.

“The Spirit of Sepharad: From Casbah to Caliphate” with Gerard Edery and the Caravan Ensemble

The Ashkenaz Festival, the largest Jewish cultural event in Canada, will be held at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre Aug. 31 to Sept. 6. Performances include the 14-piece gypsy group, The Other Europeans; Frank London’s “A Night in the Old Marketplace;” the Balkan Beat Box; Bosnian-Ladino legend Flory Jagoda; and Divahn, the all-female Persian/Middle-Eastern fusion group. Ashkenazfestival.com.

When we look at an image — a photograph or a filmed scene — what do we see? Do we see reality, or do we see what the photographer or the filmmaker wants us to see? Can we trust any photograph, either still or moving, to be an objective record, or are all manufactured images inherently unreliable, dependent on the choices of their creator?

Yael Hersonski, the young Israeli director of “A Film Unfinished,” wants us to consider these conundrums when viewing her brave and thought-provoking documentary, which opened in New York this week at the Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza.

Putti’s leader, Ribbi Enosh Keki Mainah, leads the weekday shacharit service.

The Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly hosts a benefit concert for the Abayudaya Jews of Putti, Uganda, with folk musician Andy Cohen, along with Blind Boy Paxton, who plays the guitar, banjo, and piano, on Sunday, Aug. 29, from 7:30-10 p.m. Proceeds will go towards critical medical needs and long-term sustainability projects including education, farming, eco-tourism, and the development of cottage industries. $18 for JCC members, $22 for non-members. Lynn, (201) 408-1458, www.thejewsofuganda.org orwww.jccotp.org.

In the talkback after a performance of his play “The Punishing Blow,” Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, acknowledged that it was only after Mel Gibson had his infamous anti-Semitic meltdown that Cohen conceived of a dramatic way to tell a story that fascinated him — the history of 18th-century Jewish boxer Daniel Mendoza. That history is still the most vital part of “The Punishing Blow,” a one-man production by the York Shakespeare Company at the Clurman in New York’s Theatre Row, but the frame that Cohen has contrived adds dimension to the issue of anti-Semitism and its manifestations in the 21st century.

Justin Boccitto

The Summer Concert series at the YM-YWHA of North Jersey in Wayne concludes with the one-man musical, “George M. Cohan Tonight” starring Justin Boccitto, on Thursday, Aug. 26, at 7 p.m. The event is free. At 5:30, there is an all-you-can-eat buffet in the Y’s Tel Aviv Café with pasta, fish, salad, soup, fruit, and drink for $7.95. For information, call (973) 595-0100, ext. 237.

One of the most startling facts in the award-winning political documentary “Neshoba: The Price of Freedom” is that when they dragged the Mississippi River to recover the bodies of three civil-rights workers in 1964, they recovered nine other bodies as well. That’s how commonplace murder was in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in the 1960s — people disappeared routinely enough that pulling a dozen bodies out of the river was no big deal. That many of the people interviewed in the film don’t find that past reality disturbing may be the film’s most sobering conclusion.

More than 50 years have passed since a group of Klansmen killed James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner during a 1964 voting-rights drive called Mississippi Freedom Summer. Anyone old enough to remember that time will recall the shock and revulsion much of the country felt about the murders, and the fear that spread through Jewish households.