Jon Kalish is a Manhattan-based writer and radio journalist.
Jon Kalish
By Jon Kalish
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The Schmooze Jazz Rabbi Gets a New Gig
The Jazz Rabbi has a new gig. Saxophonist Greg Wall, who spent three years making klezmer and jazz concerts a staple at an East Village congregation, has a new pulpit in Connecticut. On August 1 Wall began work at Beit Chaverim Synagogue of Westport and Norwalk. The shul, which has 65 families, is located in…
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Culture Poor Heiress Pens Unorthodox Orthodox Memoir
Rokeby is an estate along the Hudson River that was built nearly 200 years ago by relatives of John Jacob Astor, America’s first multimillionaire. About two dozen people currently live in various buildings spread out along the 400-plus acres of rolling hills. But the 43-room stucco mansion at Rokeby) is occupied by a handful of…
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The Schmooze End of an Era for Judith Malina’s Living Theatre
Judith Malina will not go gentle into that good night. The fiery 86-year-old director of the Living Theatre is losing both her apartment and the Lower East Side home of the world renowned theater troupe she co-founded 66 years ago. Later this week Malina will move into an elder care facility in New Jersey, but…
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News Larry Selman, Star of Oscar-Nominated Documentary, Dies
They sat shiva for Larry Selman on Monday night on Bedford Street. Selman, 70, died Sunday morning in a Manhattan hospital from heart failure. Alice Elliot’s Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Collector of Bedford Street,” chronicled the developmentally disabled man who collected donations for charity in his Greenwich Village neighborhood for decades. Elliot and her neighbors established…
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The Schmooze This Israeli Life
A young Israeli grad student named Mishy holds up a cardboard sign that says “anywhere” as he hitchhikes out of Cambridge, England. He catches a ride with a Gypsy family bound for the ferry to France. In the vessel’s cafeteria Mishy meets a truck driver name Vladimir who agrees to take him to Spain. Only,…
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News The Collector of Bedford Street Meets Sandy
For more than 30 years now a developmentally disabled man in Greenwich Village has been collecting donations for a variety of charities. His name is Larry Selman and he was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary titled “The Collector of Bedford Street.” He’s been doing the same thing for years. But his life took a…
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News Nechemya Weberman’s Unique Band of Relatives
You think your family has issues? Consider the Weberman clan. Nechemya Weberman was convicted December 10 for child sexual abuse in a landmark case that underlined the massive support he enjoyed in the Satmar Hasidic community. But it turns out that he is just one high-profile member of a sprawling brood, whose diverse activities have…
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News Living With Two Identities
For Orthodox Jews, being both observant and actively gay, is a theological taboo. Producer Jon Kalishspoke to four gay Orthodox Jews who are trying to merge their two identities. The group includes an ordained Orthodox rabbi and a Hasidic lesbian living in a frum section of Brooklyn.
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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