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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Music The Secret Jewish History of James Taylor
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the Forward on August 3, 2015. This past June, James Taylor finally achieved a feat that had eluded the folk-pop singer-songwriter for the past 45 years or so: His new album, “Before This World,” shot to No. 1 in its first week of release. The last time…
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Culture Wait — was the U.N. Secretary General quoting Bob Dylan or the Talmud?
Is U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres a Talmudic scholar or a Bob Dylan fan? Or both? Close students of Dylan and the Talmud immediately recognized Guterres’s assessment that “a wind of madness is sweeping the globe” as an allusion to one or both of these original sources. In Tractate Sotah 3a of the Talmud, Reysh Lakish…
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Film & TV There’s something very Jewish about Winnie-The-Pooh — and it’s not just Eeyore’s attitude
Editor’s Note: A.A. Milne, the creator of the “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories was born on this day in 1882. To commemorate his birthday, we look back at the Jewish elements in his work. A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories have delighted youngsters for over 90 years, as have their numerous spinoffs as TV shows, cartoons, holiday specials, movies and,…
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Culture The secret Jewish history of Dr. Dolittle
Robert Downey Jr. presumably had a better time making the new movie “Dolittle,” based on Hugh Lofting’s “Doctor Dolittle” stories and opening in theaters on Friday, January 17, than did his fellow Jew, Anthony Newley, who had a miserable experience on the set of the original 1967 “Doctor Dolittle” film version, which starred Rex Harrison….
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Culture The Secret Jewish History Of Ludwig Van Beethoven
When you are 250 years old and world famous, you don’t have to wait until your birthday comes around to celebrate. Nor does the rest of the world. Which is why the celebration of a quarter of a millennium since Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth begins this December 16 (or 17; the date is a little…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History Of The Rockettes
Is there anything more goyish than the Rockettes, the “precision-dance” troupe best known for its starring role in the annual “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall? Well, yes. As it turns out, the entire creative team behind the annual Radio City holiday event, which began in 1932, were Jewish men brought together by Samuel…
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Culture Is ‘A Christmas Carol’ antisemitic?
Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” has been variously interpreted over the years as a humanist or secular parable, a pre-Freudian psychological thriller, an old-fashioned ghost story, an anti-capitalist screed, and, yes, a Jewish story wearing the cloak of Victorian England. It has also been mined for its anti-Semitic tropes, as has other work by Dickens…
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Music The Secret Jewish History of The Who
Editor’s Note: On the occasion of The Who’s first new album in 13 years, we look back at the band’s secret Jewish history, which we first explored in 2015. If The Who’s visionary songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had had his way, “Tommy” — an allegory about a traumatized messiah — would not have been…
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