Eddy Portnoy
By Eddy Portnoy
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Culture From Alex Weiser, A New Musical Home For Yiddish
Composer Alex Weiser’s debut album “and all the days were purple” will be released by Cantaloupe Music on April 12th, with a release concert at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research on April 9th. The music, which finds inspiration from secular Jewish poetry in Yiddish and English, chronicles a search for the divine while reflecting…
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Culture That Time Two Jewish Con Artists Got Way More Than They Bargained For
During the early twentieth century, the New York–based socialist daily, Forverts, the progenitor of the very Forward you are currently reading, was the largest and most successful Yiddish newspaper in the world. Among the local, national, and international news, editorial, literary, and entertainment pieces it printed, the Forverts also commissioned original reporting on all manner…
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Culture Well, This Certainly Is The Most Inappropriate Haggadah For Passover
For This We Left Egypt?” By Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel and Adam Mansbach Flat Iron Books, 144 pages, $19.99 Let’s face it, seders can be boring. Jews want to eat and there’s this long text cock-blocking their way to the brisket. Sure, it’s punctuated with a few nice songs and maybe some interesting discussion, but…
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The Schmooze The Ink-Stained Men Behind the Superhero Masks
There is little argument regarding the fact that Superman, Captain America, and The Green Lama are comic book heroes. But if you thought muscle-bound, caped-crusaders who wear their underpants on the outside are the only heroes of the genre, you’d be flat out wrong. If you delve into Drew Friedman’s brilliant new book, “Heroes of…
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Culture Vatican Absolves Jews for the Alleged Murder of Jesus Christ
1914 • 100 years ago Jews of Warsaw Left Penniless With the onset of the current war, the Jews of Warsaw, Poland, are already experiencing difficulties and privations. The banks have shut down, preventing depositors from retrieving their funds. Many stand outside the banks with their heads in their hands, penniless until the banks permit…
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Culture Rumors Arise of Jewish Emancipation by Russian Czar
1914 • 100 years ago Jewish Emancipation by the Czar? A number of interested parties that are participants in the current European war are courting the Jews of the Pale of Settlement. Correspondents in St. Petersburg have reported that the Russian government is not averse to giving its Jews full civil rights and equality, just…
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Culture Riots Break Out After Bank Loses Money
1914 • 100 years ago The Bank With No Money A wild riot took place last week on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in front of Yarmulovsky’s Bank on East Broadway and Essex Street, after depositors discovered that the bank had no money for them. The police made multiple arrests after rioters attempted to break down…
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Culture The Forverts Calls For Demonstration by New York City Socialists
1914 • 100 years ago Forverts Calls For Demonstration More than 10,000 demonstrators showed up to protest the tyranny of capitalism that is responsible for a blood-drenched war. They were prodded, in part, by an editorial in the Forverts requesting the presence of all socialists to attend a protest meeting in New York City’s Union…
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