Yiddish folksong expert, researcher and anthologist Chana Mlotek died on November 4 at age 91. Mlotek maintained a decades-long association with the Forverts and with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where she was the institute’s music archivist. When I worked with Mlotek at YIVO, people would come to the archives and say, “I only…
Lou Reed — legendary rock iconoclast, gimlet-eyed poet laureate of the New York City streets, and one of the most important songwriters of the past fifty years — died yesterday at his Long Island home in Southampton, N.Y., following a long battle with liver disease. If it seems amazing that Reed lived to age 71,…
I first heard those eerie xylophone notes that open the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” when I was 14, sitting on the rug of my friend Mollie’s bedroom. A moment later, I heard Lou Reed’s voice for the first time, and everything changed. That day, we were two Upper West Side Jewish girls who showed up…
The son of convicted Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke said his father “can be buried in Israel so that they will be happy,” referring to Jews. Jorge Priebke, reacting to rejections by Rome, Argentina and his father’s hometown in German to provide a venue for the funeral, told the Italian news agency Ansa that his…
Erich Priebke, a former German Nazi SS officer convicted of one of Italy’s worst wartime massacres, died on Friday in Rome at the age of 100, his lawyer said. Priebke had been living under house arrest in Rome after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 for the killings of 335 civilians in the Ardeatine…
Tom Clancy, the author of bestselling techno-thrillers who died on October 1, was called the “novelist with the biggest ideological clout currently active” in a 2002 article by British writer John Sutherland. If this is still true, Jewish readers and others may have cause for concern. Clancy, whose books such as “The Hunt for Red…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. When Dov Noy would lecture, often without notes, he would look upwards and seemingly draw his inspiration from the upper spheres. But Noy, who was expert in the folklore of numerous Jewish “tribes,” including Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Middle Eastern Jews, developed his profound knowledge from earthbound…
If you saw Richard Parks’ 2011 documentary short, “Music Man Murray,” then you’ll know that Murray Gershenz was looking for a long time to sell his famous used record business (also called Music Man Murray) and its collection of more than 300,000 records. Gershenz, who opened his landmark store on Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Boulevard…
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