On June 22, it was announced that the musicians of the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic (BPO) have elected their first-ever Jewish music director, the Russian maestro Kirill Petrenko. Not only was this choice ground-breaking, it was an indirect response to another job candidate, the German conductor Christian Thielemann whose right-wing politics and anti-immigrant feelings seemed to…
With the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presenting a Holocaust inspired piece, “No Longer Silent,” at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, the iconic African American company has branched into new territory. In fact, it’s unprecedented, explained its artistic director Robert Battle, who choreographed the piece. Its musical score was composed by Erwin…
In Raanana, Israel, Eugene Drucker’s brown eyes welled with tears as he finished a rendition of Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, which his father began 80 years prior in Germany, only to be cut short by anti-Semitic Nazi policy. Accompanied by the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, the 63-year-old, says his father, Ernest Drucker,…
At a coffee shop in northeast Minneapolis, a short walk from his home, Adam Levy turns over his left forearm to show the spider tattoo that his son Daniel designed. It’s from the day he and Daniel got tattoos together, a father-son outing that left him with this souvenir. Levy is the front man for…
Back in 1967, in the midst of his initial run of brilliantly pithy three-chord pop singles, Neil Diamond cut a pair of radio jingles for Coca-Cola. One of them was an upbeat rocker in the Latin-tinged “Cherry, Cherry” vein, the other a slow strummer that built to a crescendo a la “I Got the Feelin’…
Mira Lapidot, 44, has risen through the ranks of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, starting her career 16 years ago as a guide and, in the past three years, serving as chief curator of the fine arts wing. Yet at that moment of personal achievement she and her team were already planning what they knew…
(j weekly via JTA) — A junior at Stanford University who is running for the student senate says she faced anti-Semitic questioning from a student group whose endorsement she was seeking. During a March 13 interview in front of eight members of the university’s Students of Color Coalition, Molly Horwitz, 21, alleges that the lead interviewer…
Spanish-speaking Israelis complained that Spain’s legislation for the naturalization of Sephardic Jews has been rendered symbolic because of changes to a bill that would formalize the procedure. The changes to the government-supported draft bill were introduced last month during deliberations at a congressional committee ahead of a vote by the Spanish Congress scheduled for Dec….
Within hours of today’s terrorist attack on the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, Israeli singer Amir Benayoun had already written, produced and released a new song about the killing of four Jewish worshipers by Palestinians. The popular musician, who sings in Hebrew and Arabic, has a history of responding to political…
A Palestinian stabbed and critically wounded an Israeli soldier near a Tel Aviv train station on Monday, police said, as anti-Israel violence that has raised concern about a new Palestinian uprising in the making reached the country’s business capital. Israeli-Palestinian tensions have festered over access to a Jerusalem compound housing Islam’s third holiest site and…
Israel will release 138 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers who the nation’s Supreme Court ruled were being held illegally. Thursday’s ruling was in response to a petition filed by the nonprofit organization The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. Following the decision, the Population and Immigration Authority said that the inmates would be released by Tuesday…
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