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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think
Embedded
A welcome antidote for those in withdrawal from “Serial” (or for those who didn’t find the second season of “Serial” as satisfying as the first), “Embedded,” hosted by NPR’s Kelly McEvers, provided a master class in longform radio journalism. The podcast equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative piece in The Atlantic or The New York…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Jenny Diski’s ‘In Gratitude’
Jenny Diski’s “In Gratitude” resonates as sharply as a slap to the face: Wake up, the book demands. Inspired by the author’s diagnosis of terminal cancer in 2014 (she died in April of this year), it tells a pair of interwoven stories: first, that of Diski’s dying, and then the saga of her teenage years,…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think Notes From the Field
No options but jail or death; look askance at a cop at your own peril; we’re failing our kids, our young adults, our own humanity. These are but some of the messages Anna Deavere Smith channeled in her indelible show, “Notes From the Field.” Melding journalism, anthropology and performance, Smith stitched a riveting investigation of…
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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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