In ‘Leopoldstadt,’ Tom Stoppard shows that there’s a difference between a Jew of culture and a cultural Jew
The playwright’s first reckoning with his Jewish past is too busy with history to engage in emotion
The playwright’s first reckoning with his Jewish past is too busy with history to engage in emotion
Roger Guenveur Smith had been meaning to play Anne Frank’s father for some time – but first he had to embody someone quite different. “I was finally ready to really dive into the archives, and lo and behold, we lost Rodney King,” said Smith, who performed a one-man show as King, the Black victim of…
'Prayer for the French Republic' asks tough questions, but provides no easy answers
For over a decade Stephen Tobolowsky has been sharing stories. Have you heard the one about his Talmud collection? The 70-year-old actor, known for his turns as a folksy insurance salesman in “Groundhog Day” and a hapless tech sociopath in “Silicon Valley,” has written two books, hosts a podcast and is now debuting an audio…
Like President-elect Joe Biden, I am embarking on a challenging new path in my 70s. In early 2021, the Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western New York will have a Zoom staged reading of my play “Finding Mr. Rightstein.” A June 8, 2020 in-person reading there was canceled because of the pandemic. The artistic director, who…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thirty-five years ago, Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld co-wrote the script for a musical called “The Golden Land” in honor of the 85th anniversary of the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper. The goal then was to depict, through Yiddish song, the first decades of Eastern European Jewish immigration…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rabbi Barry Freundel was the rabbi of Kesher Israel in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. He was a man of power in his synagogue, and influence in the wider modern Orthodox world. But all of that went away when he was convicted in 2015 on voyeurism charges after spying on and filming…
Ken Kaissar was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, and grew up in a right-wing Jewish household in Indianapolis. His father fought in three Israeli wars—1956, 1967, and 1973—and growing up, Kaissar was told that Israel was in perpetual danger and that, as he put it, “the Arabs wanted to kill us and destroy us.” As…
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