While I was watching “Encanto,” I wondered if its magical Madrigals, the family at the heart of the Oscar-nominated Disney animated film, were Jewish. They’re close-knit to the point of being smothering. They’re successful yet grappling with generations of pain. And their powers come from a candle that has miraculously burned for 50 years —…
This week’s parsha concerns God’s instructions to the Israelites in the wilderness on the design of priestly temple garments, how to properly light the menorah and how to build the golden altar of incense. So perhaps it’s fitting that the Moses-y desert parable “Dune” is now nominated for the Oscar gold in costume design, cinematography…
2021 was a year of new beginnings — not just for our newly reopened society, but also for the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to mutate into increasingly scary-sounding novel Greek letter variants. And so, we end 2021 on a note of uncertainty. In a year like this, when Taylor Swift surprised us with a 10-minute…
Today is the birthday of Stephen Sondheim, perhaps the musical theater’s greatest composer and lyricist who has ever lived. Sondheim is responsible for the lyrics of the Broadway musicals “Gypsy” and “West Side Story,” and the music and lyrics of “Sweeney Todd,” “Into The Woods,” “Sunday In The Park With George,” “A Funny Thing Happened…
Lin-Manuel Miranda is a household name. He made Alexander Hamilton one, too. Might he have done the same for a young ultra-Orthodox painter named Asher Lev? During a November 19 Reddit Ask Me Anything, Miranda said that he once owned the theatrical rights to Chaim Potok’s novel “My Name is Asher Lev” (1972), which follows…
On Thursdays in the winter, all we want is half-a-dozen golden retriever puppies, a bowl of warm drinking chocolate, and human rights and a social safety net for all. But until those things can arrive, this video of “Hamilton” creator and “Moana” composer Lin Manuel Miranda joining Jewish comic Billy Eichner to hug random New…
The world’s best loved polymath will add one more skill to his impressive resume: Directing. “Hamilton” creator Lin Manuel Miranda is set to make his directing debut, helming a movie version of Jonathan Larson’s musical, “Tick, Tick…Boom!” Deadline reports. And as if the marriage of Larson, the brilliant Jewish composer-lyricist of “Rent” and Miranda wasn’t…
Remembering Stephen Sondheim on the occasion of his birthday
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