Jazz, Talmud, and the Postmodern Jewish Condition
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Ezra Glinter September 21, 2010
This Monday, September 27, the Forward is proud to sponsor “Jazz Talmud,” a “conceptual, multi-genre art performance,” by Forward (and Arty Semite) contributor Jake Marmer. Jake writes:
I wrote a sequence of “Talmudic” poems that imitate the rhetoric and turn of phrase of the Talmud but are about other things — dreams, crisis, jazz, the whole post-modern Jewish condition. I will be performing these poems with two horn players: Grammy-winning Klezmatics trumpeter Frank London and another klez legend, Greg Wall: They will be acting as Rashi and Tosafot — spontaneous interpreters of the text. Fifteen-piece jazz-klezmer group Ayn Sof Arkestra will also participate on a few compositions, as the “acharonim” — the interpreters of the interpreters. Then Ayn Sof will play their own set.
The performance will be at New York’s Cell Theater, at 7:30 p.m.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
