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 The Secret Jewish History of Bon Jovi
Coming off a banner year in which the 34-year-old pop-metal band released its sixth No. 1 album, Bon Jovi is ready to rock its way through 2017, kicking off a major tour of U.S. arenas in Greenville, South Carolina, on February 8, with shows scheduled well into April. Why, at the age of 55, does…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of McDonald’s
There’s more than meets the eye in the title of “The Founder,” the new biopic of Ray Kroc. For while Kroc carefully cultivated his image as “the founder” of McDonald’s, two brothers named McDonald invented their namesake restaurant chain. By the time Kroc — a traveling salesman played by Michael Keaton in the film —…
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Culture Was David Bowie’s Last Work About Bob Dylan and a Jewish Poet?
According to an essay written by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham (“The Hours”), the David Bowie musical “Lazarus” was initially conceived as a show about the great Jewish-American poet, Emma Lazarus, who is best known for her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” whose lines appear inscribed on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of…
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Culture What I Learned From a ‘Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheist’ Like Nat Hentoff
Reading Nat Hentoff in the 1970s in the Village Voice and elsewhere, as I did, helped clue me into an essential truth: that a writer needn’t specialize in one area to the exclusion of all else. In Hentoff’s case – which was particularly inspiring to me as a budding music critic who was also obsessed…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Dylan at Tanglewood
Going into Bob Dylan’s concert at Tanglewood on July 2, 2016, I was prepared to hate it, having absolutely no interest in hearing him sing Frank Sinatra songs live (or on record, for that matter). Leave it to Dylan, then, to perform a scorching two-hour show. He alternated some of his moodiest, angriest, late-period rockers…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of ‘Fences’ Author August Wilson
The long-awaited film version of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson’s “Fences” opens nationally on Sunday, December 25. The movie is being touted as Oscar bait for Denzel Washington, who both stars in and directs the film, and for his co-star Viola Davis. (The film reprises their roles in the 2010 Broadway revival of this Pulitzer-…
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Culture Did Kanye and Trump Trade Jewish Gossip — or Just Say ‘L’Chaim’?
Rapper Kanye West paid a visit to Trump Tower on Tuesday to visit with the man he told an audience recently he would have voted for had he voted on Election Day. Two days after that concert, on November 21, the hip-hop superstar cancelled his remaining concerts and was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital,…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Jackie Kennedy
Now that Jackie Kennedy is being portrayed onscreen by the most famous Israeli-born actress in the world, it’s worth looking closely at the former first lady’s life to pick up the Jewish strands she left behind. 1) Although Jacqueline Bouvier boasted Anglo-Irish and French ancestry, that didn’t stop some from falsely claiming Jewish heritage for…
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