Jon Kalish is a Manhattan-based writer and radio journalist.
Jon Kalish
By Jon Kalish
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Culture Michigan Opera Director Turns His Hand to Yiddish Theater
“You can’t dance at two weddings with one tukhes,” goes the old Yiddish saying. Tell that to Michael Yashinsky, a 26-year-old Detroit area Yiddishist who divides his time between a Jewish day school and Michigan Opera Theatre. Yashinsky, whose showbiz lineage includes grandparents who were professional actors and an uncle who was a rock star,…
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News Judith Malina, Edgy Theatrical Rebel for the Ages, Dies at 88
Judith Malina loved to tell a story about her experience playing the role of Grandmama in “The Addams Family,” which was filmed during the First Gulf War, in 1991. A committed pacifist, Malina was known on the set for trying to engage co-stars Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia in the anti-war effort. So it was…
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The Schmooze Judith Malina, Theater Rebel, Dies at 88
Nate Lavey Photo Judith Malina, an iconoclastic actor and theater world activist who founded the Living Theater, has died at 88, the New York Times reported. Here’s the Forward’s account of her battle to save the Lower East Side drama institution. Judith Malina will not go gentle into that good night. The fiery 86-year-old director…
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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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