Why should Justin Bieber have all the fun? Instead of the teenage pop sensation chanting “Baby, Baby, Baby,” why not the words “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” sung to the same tune? One professional Jewish a cappella group is doing just that. Six13 is part of a growing number of Hebraic harmonizers springing up across America in…
Beijing (formerly Peking) opera is not like anything else. Certainly it?s not like Western opera, except to the extent that both art forms have singers act out stories. To an untrained Western ear, the women?s voices in Chinese opera can resemble nothing so much as the mewing of cats, as cats and female singers of…
We all believe in magic. Despite 300 years of industrial and social revolution, as well as unparalleled explanation of the natural world through the scientific method, we still throw salt over our shoulders, put up hamsas in our homes, wear lucky shirts to job interviews and run through tested game-day rituals, whether we are playing…
“Schmatta: Rags To Riches To Rags,” a documentary about the rise and decline of New York’s garment district — and the efforts to preserve what remains of a sector that played a vital role in the American Jewish experience during the past century — premieres October 19 on HBO. Its director, Marc Levin, recently sat…
The June 19 wedding of Sarah Hoenig, 21, and Eric Kinzbrunner, 22, began with all the pageantry one would expect of an Orthodox ceremony. In a pre-wedding bedeken, the bride’s veil was lowered. The marriage contract, or ketubah, was signed at the groom’s table, or tisch, and the blessings were chanted and the glass broken…
