Dan Epstein is the Forward’s contributing music critic. His books include Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76.
Dan EpsteinContributing Music Critic
By Dan Epstein
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Culture How Herb Alpert Made the Most Underrated Jewish Christmas Album of All Time
This first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve this year, a collision of holidays that — for me, at least — inevitably brings to mind all the classic Christmas songs that have been written by Jews. Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is the big blini, of course, having been covered more than 500 times since…
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Culture How Blue Pajamas and a Magic Pizza Made a Miracle Happen for the Chicago Cubs
I awoke yesterday morning to find my brain shrouded by fog, echoes of bad decisions emanating from my stomach, and my mouth tasting like the circus had recently left town via my tongue. I staggered to the fridge for some water, and found a small, neatly saran-wrapped square of cheese pizza sitting upon the top…
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Culture An Auschwitz Home Movie Scored by Eric Clapton
‘I’d always avoided Auschwitz,” Philippe Mora says near the beginning of his new documentary, “Three Days in Auschwitz.” “I was like, ‘Who wants to go to Auschwitz?’” Mora’s question is, at least on the surface, perfectly understandable. After all, with any number of exotic and enticing locations currently available for our visiting or vacationing pleasure,…
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Culture How Strat-O-Matic Baseball Changed My Life Forever
On a warm afternoon in the autumn of 1976, my friend Jonathan took me up to his family’s dusty attic playroom and introduced me to something that would change my life forever. No, it wasn’t my first puff of weed, my first look at National Lampoon (or Hustler), or even my first listen to the…
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Music How Kenny Schaffer Became the Father of Invention
‘A lot of things are invented by people looking for money,” says Kenny Schaffer. “Many people say I should be a billionaire many times over, but it doesn’t matter to me. I go for ideas that stimulate or excite me. It’s not the American way of doing business, but I’ve been able to eke out…
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Culture The Holocaust Survivor Who Became an Unlikely Korean War Hero
Single Handed: The Inspiring True Story of Tibor “Teddy” Rubin” Holocaust Survivor, Korean War Hero, and Medal of Honor Recipient By Daniel M. Cohen Penguin/Berkley Books, 448 Pages, $27.95 On May 5, 1945, when General George Patton’s 11th Armored Division liberates the Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria, the American soldiers find the bodies of…
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Culture Meet the Top 11 Jewish Sellout Artists
It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ’n’ roll, as some wise man once said; and even once you get there, you may be waiting awhile for the promised rewards to start rolling in. While there’s a long tradition of criticizing musicians for “selling out” when they release music with…
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Music Why Neil Diamond Still Matters
Back in 1967, in the midst of his initial run of brilliantly pithy three-chord pop singles, Neil Diamond cut a pair of radio jingles for Coca-Cola. One of them was an upbeat rocker in the Latin-tinged “Cherry, Cherry” vein, the other a slow strummer that built to a crescendo a la “I Got the Feelin’…
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