Seth Rogovoy, a contributing editor at the Forward, is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner) and Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press).
Seth Rogovoy
By Seth Rogovoy
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Culture In her greatest hit, Stevie Nicks spun a Kabbalistic tale
With the news that Stevie Nicks has inked a deal with a studio to make a TV miniseries based on her song “Rhiannon,” the only question left is whether or not the show will explore the Kabbalistic depths of the 1976 hit that propelled Fleetwood Mac into the mainstream. A rolling stone gathers no moss…
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Culture On his 80th birthday, remembering the time John Lennon sang ‘Hava Nagilah’
Had he not been gunned down in December 1980 by a deranged “fan” lying in wait for him outside of his Upper West Side residence in Manhattan, John Lennon may well have been observing his 80th birthday on Friday, October 9. The ostensible founder and leader of the Beatles, the most beloved critically and commercially…
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Culture That time the Bee Gees sang a love song to Israel
News that HBO has acquired the rights to air “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” — the first authorized documentary about the famed singing group —made us wonder if it might offer any insight into or reveal the untold story behind the group’s 1971 ballad, “Israel.” The British-by-way-of-Australia group’s 1971 album,…
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Culture Remembering Eddie Van Halen and his Jewish mentor
Eddie Van Halen, the iconoclastic rock guitarist best known for his instrumental contributions to his namesake band, has died after a year-long bout with throat cancer. Van Halen, who in 1972 founded the group Van Halen with his brother, Alex Van Halen, was 65. Eddie’s flashy guitar-playing, along with frontman David Lee Roth’s outrageous, wild-man…
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Culture Has Donald Trump been listening to Blue Oyster Cult?
Has President Donald Trump been listening to Blue Oyster Cult during his four-day stay at Walter Reed Medical Center, where he has been under medical care since Friday as the world’s most famous coronavirus patient? How else to explain yet another of his inscrutable tweets? This afternoon, the Tweeter-in-Chief told the world “Don’t be afraid…
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Culture Just how Jewish are the top 500 albums of all time?
Rolling Stone magazine recently updated its list of the Top 500 albums of the rock era for the first time since 2003. This time around, the list includes 50 albums by Jewish artists and groups — depending on how you define “Jewish artists and groups,” of course. For example, were the Band — whose main…
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Culture Is suburbia the American dream — or its worst nightmare?
On the very first page of “The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs,” author Jason Diamond describes feeling ambivalent about admitting you’re from the suburbs. “If you’re from Long Island … you’ll tell anyone who asks you’re from New York,” he writes, to which I reply, “Guilty as charged.” Diamond himself has always claimed Chicago…
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Culture On his 73rd birthday, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s secret Jewish history
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turns 73 on Thursday, July 30, had, at best an ambivalent and, at worst a difficult relationship with his father, Gustav. A police chief and former member of the Nazi party, Gustav was a strict disciplinarian who favored Arnold’s older brother, Meinhard. Gustav supposedly harbored doubts that he was even Arnold’s biological…
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Opinion New York’s Israel Day parade was a shanda — but not because of Mamdani
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish פֿאָרשונגען פֿון וויכטיקע היסטאָריקער אויף ייִדיש — איצט אַרויס אויף ענגלישResearch studies in Yiddish by noted historians, now in English
דער באַגריף, ייִדישע אױטאָנאָמיע אין גלות — הײַנט פּאָפּולער בײַ קריטיקער פֿון ציוניזם — איז היסטאָריש ניט געװען קײן דערפֿאָלג.
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Culture In the course of his 104 years, he resisted the Nazis, fought against blood libel and became a towering Jewish intellectual
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Culture That time Allen Ginsberg wrote a Socialist poem — about Bernie Sanders
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Letters The real reason Jews care about Marilyn Monroe