Editor’s note: this piece, originally titled “Jews in Exotic Lands,” ran as a feature in the now defunct JPSP Magazine in 1970. The article profiles Bob Rubin, one of the few Jews of Stillwater, Oklahoma; his son, Mark Rubin (who still resides in the South), has transcribed the piece for digital publication and added a…
Cut live and mostly first takes, this is my first genuine “folk” release: Songs for the Hangman’s Daughter. I believe in it so strongly that I present it to you on a pay-as-you-like basis. Anyone and everyone who is even curious can give it a listen. I would be remiss if I did not also…
For 20 years, I was a pop music critic. Every year as the calendar wound down, here came one of music journalism’s over-roasted chestnuts: the annual roundup of new Christmas albums. I never groaned. I’m one of those Christmas music people. As soon as the Thanksgiving turkey is down my gullet, I’m trotting out the…
Under the cover of night, a 6-foot-tall (180-cm) granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments was removed from the Oklahoma Capitol grounds after judges said its placement on government land violated state law, officials said on Tuesday. The monument, which had drawn strong support from the Republican leadership of the socially conservative state, has been…
Members of the Oklahoma City Jewish community buried the remains of a Jewish Holocaust victim at a local cemetery. The traditional Jewish funeral was held Sunday at the Fairlawn Cemetery in the Oklahoma capital, The Oklahoman reported. A local minister had received the remains of the woman, a skull, from the daughter-in-law of a Jewish…
1) 4,650 Jews live in Oklahoma. 2) Isaac Lowenstein opened Oklahoma’s first vaudeville house in 1909. 3) Seymour Heyman, who ran The Hub clothing store owned the Oklahoma City Mets, a baseball team that played in the Southwestern League and Western Association in the first decade of the 20th century. 4) The inventor of the…
● American Innovations By Rivka Galchen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 192 pages, $24 The stories in Rivka Galchen’s “American Innovations,” aren’t all fantastical — although a fair number include elements of magic realism and science fiction — but even the most realistic stories in this collection have a kind of magical quality about them that…
Sholem Alechem, Oklahoma! The name of an oil field several miles out of Ardmore, Okla., is a puzzle to local residents. Some believe that it must commemorate a Native American site. After all, Oklahoma was once Indian Territory, and it is still flush with Native American reservations and local names, from Shawnee Twin Lakes to…
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