Gabriel Sanders

By Gabriel Sanders

• Culture

  After Years of Decline, Cantorial Music Gets a Second Act

  This past Sunday, a concert featuring a Hasidic cantor and 64 members of the New York Philharmonic drew 4,000 listeners to a sold-out Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Tickets went for as much as $250, and those on the waiting list numbered more than 1,000. Last month, at a conference co-sponsored by the Conservative…

  By Gabriel Sanders Dec 8, 2006 | 4 min read
• News

  Lego My Ghetto: Sparks Fly Again as Kids Craft Shoah Model

  Lego is all about connecting disparate elements, snapping together different pieces to form new constructions. But for Dan Sieradski, editor of the Web log Jewschool.com, one recent Lego-based project — using the toy to fashion a Holocaust-inspired model — went one click too far. On hearing that a New Jersey architect was going to lead…

  By Gabriel Sanders Nov 17, 2006 | 4 min read
• Israel News

  Will the Ghost of Hank Greenberg Save the Tigers?

  Saddened by the Detroit Tigers 5-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals last night, and fearful that the Cards might snatch the national title tonight, documentary filmmaker — and lifelong Tigers fan — Aviva Kempner didn’t much feel like talking about the present. Instead, her thoughts were focused on the year of the two teams’…

  By Gabriel Sanders Oct 27, 2006 | 2 min read
• Culture

  Angels & Demons

  On the eve of the release of Freida Lee Mock’s new documentary “Wrestling with Angels,” a glimpse into the post-9/11 world of playwright/activist Tony Kushner, the Forward’s Gabriel Sanders caught up with the writer to see what he thought of the film. One problem: Kushner can’t stand seeing himself on tape and hadn’t yet brought…

  By Gabriel Sanders Oct 20, 2006 | 4 min read
• News

  Scholars Fume Over Canceled Events

  The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York decided on Monday to back out of a party celebrating a new book on Vichy France after discovering that the author’s postscript contained a passage critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The party, scheduled to take place Tuesday, was planned in honor of the…

  By Gabriel Sanders Oct 14, 2006 | 3 min read
• News

  Scholars Land Book Deal for Attack on ‘Israel Lobby’

  John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of a controversial paper criticizing the role of the “Israel Lobby” in American foreign policy, are at work on a book-length version of their findings to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The two, who have argued that it “is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet…

  By Gabriel Sanders Oct 3, 2006 | 3 min read
• News

  Protests Rattle Hungarian Jewish Community

  The anti-government protests that have rocked the Hungarian capital of Budapest for more than a week are raising alarms in the country’s 100,000-member Jewish community. From the outset, the protests, which began September 18, have embraced antisemitic terminology and symbols, including the red and white flag employed by Hungary’s fascists during World War II. The…

  By Gabriel Sanders Sep 29, 2006 | 3 min read
• Israel News

  New York Celebrates the Pickle

  An old joke from New York City’s Lower East Side: A woman asks a street-side vendor how much for one of his pickles. A nickel, he replies. “And for this pikele?” she asks hopefully. “This pikele,” he says, “will cost you a nikele.” Both the past and present of the New York pickle were on…

  By Gabriel Sanders Sep 23, 2006 | 1 min read