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 Jew as Not-So-Other at Yiddish New York
“The Jew as Other” is a theme running throughout the programming of this weekend’s Yiddish New York festival, a first-time event intended to perpetuate the decades-old annual Christmas-week gathering in the Catskills of Yiddish newbies, wannabes, and experts that was KlezKamp, which had its final incarnation last December. You could say “The Jew as Other”…
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Music Yiddish New York Transports Viewers to an Alternative Universe
During a week in which one can attend a revival of a Yiddish language musical from the golden era of Second Avenue (“The Golden Bride” by the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through January 3); or enjoy a critically acclaimed updated Broadway staging of “Fiddler on the Roof,” the musical that…
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Culture The secret Jewish history of ‘Star Wars’
In a 2012 interview, “Star Wars” creator George Lucas made the feeble claim that the release of another episode in his now-38-year-old sci-fi franchise is “not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie.” Needless to say, such a remark merely fans the flames of devotion accorded to…
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Music Why Do So Many Grammy Nominees Have Jewish Grannies?
Bob Dylan has a funny history with the Grammy Awards. He didn’t win a single Grammy for any of his truly groundbreaking and most amazing work in the 1960s – the songs that everyone thinks of when you say “Bob Dylan” – nor for his mid-1970s triumph, his comeback album “Blood on the Tracks.” It…
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Music The Secret Jewish History of Patti Smith
The first words ever uttered by Patti Smith on a recording were “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” the opening line of “Gloria” on her debut album, “Horses,” released 40 years ago this December. That line pretty much set the tone for what was to come over the next four decades. Much of…
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The Schmooze IBM Showcases a Different Side of Bob Dylan
It’s no longer news when Bob Dylan shows up in a commercial. Since 2004, he has appeared in spots for Victoria’s Secret, the Apple iPod, Cadillac, and Chrysler. But Dylan’s latest shill-ing, for an IBM “cognitive computing system” called Outthink, personified by a talking computer named Watson, introduces another side of Dylan the pitchman. Until…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Joni Mitchell
Last spring, obituary writers were scrambling when reports began surfacing that Joni Mitchell was knockin’ on heaven’s door. Rumors had the folk-rock poet lying on the floor at home for days before someone found her either unconscious, in a medically induced coma and near death, or out of a coma but paralyzed and unable to…
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Music The Secret Yiddish History of Public Enemy
If ever there was a time we needed to hear from hip-hop legends Public Enemy, this is it. One might assume that the group that gave voice and sound to the frustrations of African-Americans during the Reagan-Bush years would surely have something powerful to say about America in the age of Ferguson and Baltimore, Eric…
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