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News
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Obama’s Pre-Shabbos Call to His Pastor
The New York Times has an article about Senator Obama’s last-second decision not to have his spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, deliver the invocation at the launch of his presidential announcement…. “Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,”…
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The Chelsea Butterfly Effect
When I was wide-eyed and dewy, I lived in a ramshackle apartment building on West 22nd Street. Chelsea was just becoming Chelsea. There was Big Cup, the psychedelically painted coffee shop full of tasty gay boys and Rice Krispies Treats. There was the fabulous Salvation Army thrift store on Eighth Avenue. There was the scary,…
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Why Bloggers Can’t Let Go of Joe…
The Hartford Courant wants to know.
The Latest
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Is Senator Inhofe Proud of Being Called a Holocaust Denier?
The Washington Post has a great run-down of the Conservative Political Action Conference, held last Friday. One particularly interesting tidbit: “Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) got the crowd cheering early in the day. “I have been called – my kids are all aware of this – dumb, crazy man, science abuser, Holocaust denier, villain of the…
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Books Writing the Book on Klezmer
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I’m personally indebted to Yale Strom. I keep a hardcover copy of his reference work “The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore” (Chicago Review Press, 2002) on the bookshelf that rings the ceiling in my apartment. Whenever I need to check a…
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Books Hasidic Authors Offer Readers a Thrill
The Internet contains scores of Hasidic-dominated Yiddish sites, including chat rooms, blogs, bulletin boards and a separate version of Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia. Reading one of the Yiddish bulletin boards, I came across the following dismissive comments of an anonymous critic: “Give a look and you’ll see that nowadays all [ultra-Orthodox] Yiddish newspapers and…
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Mamaloshn: Why the Gay Connection?
On a chilly Monday evening in January, Yugntruf, a New York-based not-for-profit designed to promote Yiddish, assembled a panel to address the question “What Attracts Us to Yiddish?” Mostly in Yiddish, but with occasional forays into English for the benefit of the uninitiated, the evening’s seven panelists gamely tackled the question with a range of…
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Postcard Collection Reveals Images of a Grandfather’s World
Back in 1906, when he was 15, Benny Swartzberg could not have foreseen that, a century later, his growing collection of postcards would provide the raw material for an online store managed by his grandson. But today, Swartzberg’s grandson Steven Weiss has turned that collection into an unusual shop, selling such merchandise as journals covered…
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Cabaret Act Revives Music of Warsaw
On a frigid January evening in New York City, Rebecca Joy Fletcher and Stephen Mo Hanan performed their two-person act, “Kleynkunst!: Warsaw’s Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret,” before a full house at Helen’s Restaurant, Cabaret & Piano Lounge in Chelsea, as part of a five-day-long European cabaret festival called Kabarett Fête. The title of Fletcher’s…
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Books Publisher Opens Final Chapter
Last month’s publication of “The Cross and Other Jewish Stories” by Ukrainian-born Yiddish author Lamed Shapiro marks both a new beginning and the beginning of the end for the New Yiddish Library Series. “The Cross” is the seventh book of the series, a collaborative effort involving the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature, the…
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Thai Course Launched
A new Yiddish course is debuting in an unexpected place: Bangkok. The Goethe Institute in the Thai capital is offering Yiddish for the first time to graduates of its advanced German-language program, most of whom are Thai Buddhists. The class, which is being conducted in German and Yiddish, will also teach the basics of Jewish…
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