This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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Community Rappers And Rabbis Are All Singing The Same Song
…I wanna rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old Then magnificently we will float Into the mystic. —Van Morrison Pop singers waxing eloquent about love and sex freely borrow from the religious vernacular. Religion returns the compliment. In many synagogues these days, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah has been adopted as…
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Community The Crisis Of Faith In A Kreutzer Sonata
At age 18, David Lindenbaum finds himself suspended in between two universes that pull him in what he senses as opposite directions. On one side, there is his faith — a fervent Jew, Lindenbaum always wears a kippah (“Even while I’m sleeping,” he says with pride) and tries to maintain his religious identity also when…
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Fast Forward Singers Pull Out Of Berlin Music Festival Over Israeli Embassy Funding
(JTA) — Several artists pulled out of a popular Berlin music festival because the Israeli Embassy in Germany provided a financial contribution. The three-day Berlin Pop-Kultur festival, which runs through Friday, accepted 500 euros, or nearly $600, from the Israeli diplomatic mission. Israeli artists are among the 70 acts scheduled to perform at the festival….
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Fast Forward WATCH: Israeli Violinist Welcomes Radiohead With ‘No Surprises’ Cover
Many pro-boycotts, divestments and sanctions activists met the rock band Radiohead’s arrival in Tel Aviv on Wednesday with protests. Michael Greilsammer, a noted Israeli violinist, welcomed the band with a passionate cover of one of their songs. In a video posted earlier this week, Greilsammer plays Radiohead’s classic hit “No Surprises.” The song is from…
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Fast Forward Neo-Nazi Beaten And Marked With Swastika In ‘Antifa’ Music Video
A graphic new music video from a heavy metal band depicts anti-fascist (‘antifa’) activists tracking and abducting a neo-Nazi. The band Stray From The Path released the single, “Goodnight Alt Right,” on Wednesday to promote its upcoming album, “Only Death Is Real.” “If you preach hate, then expect hate,” the song goes. “What makes you…
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Fast Forward Radiohead Frontman Releases Statement Condemning BDS
Thom Yorke, frontman of the groundbreaking rock group Radiohead, slammed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement on Tuesday in a tweet. Yorke’s statement came in response to a tweet from Ken Loach, a British journalist who has repeatedly called for a cultural boycott of Israel. “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its…
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Fast Forward Musicologist Richard Taruskin Wins Japanese ‘Nobel’
(JTA) — Musicologist Dr. Richard Taruskin has been awarded a 2017 Kyoto Prize, the Japanese Nobel. Taruskin, a University of California, Berkeley professor emeritus, is the author of the six-volume The Oxford History of Western Music (2004). In a much-talked-about essay in 1989, he described composer Igor Stravinsky’s fascist and anti-Semitic tendencies in the 1930s, and…
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Fast Forward Chuck Schumer Found The Strength To Resist Trump From A Shirelles Song
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was despondent in the days after the presidential election, he admitted in an interview with Buzzfeed on Saturday. But he found solace and the strength to continue fighting for his beliefs from an unlikely source. “I was totally down in the dumps for three days [after the election], as was…
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Fast Forward Connie Francis, 20th-century star turned TikTok sensation, recorded an album of Jewish songs in 1960
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