Mordechai Shinefield
By Mordechai Shinefield
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News Yidcore’s Revolution-less Rock
The Ramones, a bunch of mostly Jewish New Yorkers, invented punk rock in 1974. Ironically, then, the only way to see a great, explicitly Jewish punk band today is to hop on a flight to Australia. There, some mohawk-sporting former yeshiva high-school students have been playing in a band called Yidcore for more than half…
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News Kosher Rap
Some 1,900 years ago, talmudic scholar Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students perished in a divinely decreed plague. To mourn, many observant Jews will not get a haircut, shave, wed or listen to instrumental music during the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot. To a cynic, then, the proliferation of noninstrumental, or sefirah, music is a sneaky…
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News Student Magazine’s Funding Cut
An intercollegiate Jewish student magazine says its funding was cut by an arm of the UJA-Federation of New York over articles critical of Israel. The publication, New Voices, had secured a three-year, $100,000 grant from the Solelim Fund, an organization under the auspices of the federation that advises donors. Under the terms of the grant,…
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News Trustee Faints at Y.U. Ceremony
A member of Yeshiva University’s board of trustees fainted Monday at a groundbreaking ceremony for a building named in honor of her parents. The ceremony was held for The Jacob and Dreizel Glueck Center for Jewish Study, which will be Y.U.’s first new building at the school’s campus in Manhattan’s Washington Heights area since the…
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Culture Jazzing Up Ancient Texts
In 2000, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb had just moved to Boston from Israel to attend the New England Conservatory when she received a care package from her mother. In it was a copy of ShirHaShirim, one of the five scrolls that constitute the third book of the Tanach. Many believe that King Solomon, born in Jerusalem…
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News Matisyahu Plugs In
From under his thick beard, Jewish reggae rock star Matisyahu uttered a single word: “Crap.” His New York Rangers were being beaten across the ice by Brandon from Oregon. Matisyahu, whose real name is Matthew Miller, played fans last Tuesday in quick games of NHL 2K6, a popular Xbox 360 video game. The Lubavitch Hasid,…
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Culture Striking a Chord for Crohn’s Disease Research
As a member of the band Pearl Jam, the guitarist Mike McCready has played a good number of memorable concerts, but a recent show in Portland, Ore., hit especially close to home. The July 20 concert, at which Pearl Jam shared the stage with the indie-rock trio Sleater-Kinney and the comedian David Cross, was a…
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Israel News Hackers Bring War to Jewish Web Sites
Anti-war hackers broke into three Jewish Web sites last week, swapping the front pages for protests against the conflict in Lebanon. First hit were the respective Web sites of Yeshiva University and the University of Haifa, by a coalition of international hackers that was led by a Turkish man with the hacker alias Eno7. A…
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