Jon Kalish is a Manhattan-based writer and radio journalist.
Jon Kalish
By Jon Kalish
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News Danny Schechter Was an Observant Jew, Even if he Rarely Set Foot in Shul
Danny Schechter, the self-described progenitor of “participatory journalism” who died March 19, first burst onto my radar screen back in the late 1970s, when I was working at WBAI-FM, the left-leaning community-sponsored radio station. One day, while laboring there, I heard a news story come in from Boston with an inordinate amount of reggae music…
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The Schmooze Pete Sokolow Is the ‘Youngest Old Guy’ of Klezmer
Photo: Michael Macioce The Arty Semite wishes Brooklyn musician Pete Sokolow a speedy recovery. Sokolow suffered a stroke last month and ended up missing the last KlezKamp. The man who came to be known in the klezmer revival as “the youngest old guy” is a little weak on his right side but many are hoping…
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News Is Sarah Silverman the Anti-Sandy Koufax?
Nearly 50 years after Sandy Koufax declined to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers because it fell on Yom Kippur, foul-mouthed comedian Sarah Silverman went to work on the Day of Atonement. On Friday night, October 3, as many Jews elsewhere were in synagogue reciting the Kol…
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News Sailing To Understand Talmud and Torah
On a recent weekday morning, Rabbi Greg Wall blew a 3-foot-long shofar off the coast of Norwalk, Connecticut. It was part of a Talmud class he teaches regularly aboard a 23-foot sailboat named Enough. Wall is better known for blowing a saxophone at jazz performances, but this particular gig is part of his day job…
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The Schmooze Yiddish Supergroup Pays Homage to Nathan ‘Prince’ Nazaroff
Photo: Fumie Suzuki So, there in a gazebo on the boardwalk in Coney Island are The Brothers Nazaroff, taking refuge from the steamy afternoon sun. It is 92 degrees and horribly humid outside as the five Nazaroffs start playing and singing. A Hungarian documentary crew is shooting with two cameras as the brothers sing “Lucky…
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Israel News After 30 Years, First Klezmer Festival Founder Says ‘Mission Accomplished’
Thirty years ago, klezmer music was a dying art, played mostly by aging musicians at the occasional wedding or bar mitzvah. That started changing in the late 1970s with the klezmer revival, and especially with KlezKamp, one of the first klezmer festivals and a training ground for new artists. Now, KlezKamp, the annual festival of…
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News Professor Irwin Corey, ‘World’s Foremost Authority,’ Going Strong at 100
It is the view of “Professor” Irwin Corey — the self-described “World’s Foremost Authority” on practically anything — that if a man lives to be 100, he has the right to recite a limerick about farting at his birthday party, even if it’s inside a synagogue. So that’s what happened July 29, when Corey, frail…
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The Schmooze Comedian Irwin Corey Celebrates Star-Studded Centennial
Photo: Jon Kalish I suppose that if a man lives to be 100, he has the right to recite a limerick about farting at his birthday party, even if it’s inside a synagogue. Which is exactly what happened Tuesday night when Irwin Corey was greeted by scores of well-wishers at the Actor’s Temple in Manhattan….
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