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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think
Stranger to Stranger
Paul Simon has intimated that “Stranger to Stranger” will be his last album (“I am going to see what happens if I let go,” he told The New York Times) — but wow does he ever go out on a high note. The first two cuts get stuck in your head – “The Werewolf,” an…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Disney’s Jewish Princess Moana
By Laura Albert Growing up Jewish in Brooklyn, I often heard that Jews were the Chosen People. So, imagine my surprise when I realized that Moana, the Polynesian princess in Disney’s new animated feature, repeatedly proclaims herself to be “chosen.” She is chosen to save her people — and she has no doubt that she…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Falsettos
The best play I saw on Broadway this year was the revival of “Falsettos.” From its opening number, “Four Jews in a Room Bitching,” to its tear-inducing bar mitzvah denouement, it is also the most haimish. “Falsettos” tells a story of love and family in the late 20th Century and it resonates as clearly today…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Akhnaten
In 1983, Philip Glass completed his “Portrait Trilogy” (“Einstein on the Beach,” “Satyagraha”) with “Akhnaten,” a lyrical opera about the progenitor of one of the world’s oldest monotheistic systems of beliefs, Atenism. The U.S. premiere was sleekly minimal and decidedly arty. Three decades on, Glass sits atop the small pantheon of contemporary composers who enjoy…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Diane Arbus
Arthur Lubow’s biography of Diane Arbus, which claims that Arbus carried on a lifelong sexual relationship with her brother, appeared a month before “In the Beginning,” an exhibit of Arbus’s early photographs, opened at the Met Breuer. I submit that the images on display — uncanny but deeply human, curious and impartial, full of lust…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Stupid Darn Bird
What’s “Stupid F—king Bird” about? Oh, so, so many things, including the need for new forms in art and the impossibility of those forms; the unrequitedness of love, romantic and familial alike; the foolishness and vanity of human wishes; the frailty of the flesh and of the spirit. Now, add music. Aaron Posner’s adaptation of…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Stranger Things
Why do I love “Stranger Things?” I was the same age in 1983 as the main characters, and the show contains a slew of 80’s cultural references aimed directly at my sentimental sweet spot. And then there’s Eleven — not since 12-year-old Natalie Portman made her big screen debut in “Léon: The Professional” has there…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Archie Rand’s Biblical Art
One of my greatest Jewish art surprises of 2016 came during a tour of two provocative Archie Rand exhibitions — “Sixty Paintings from the Bible” (1992) and “The Book of Judith” (2012) — at Cleveland State University with professor and curator Samantha Baskind. It’s not that Rand was a surprise to me — you may…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Butterfly Hours
I adored Patty Dann’s “The Butterfly Hours: Transforming Memories into Memoir.” It’s a memoir that is poignant, wry and modestly profound all at once. Add to that fascinating glimpses into the lives that the author’s students wrote about in the class she’s been teaching for 20-plus years at the West Side YMCA. I vowed upon…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Yael Peet
It wasn’t just that Chef Yael Peet’s lovingly rendered Japanese food at Karasu felt so personal, or that Peet managed to bring a fresh point of view to a cuisine that’s so often rendered as cliché. It’s also that every dish brought a surprise, whether it was lotus in Peet’s hijiki salad, mentaiko cod roe…
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For Parents of Murdered DNC Staffer, Conspiracy Theories Deepen the Grief
It’s been almost six months since Seth Rich was gunned down on a dark Washington street. His father, Joel Rich, still says Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day. The rabbi says he shouldn’t stop until he’s ready. But Joel and Mary Rich are grieving for their son, a 27-year-old staffer at the…
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