Today is Ariana Grande’s birthday, and we at the Forward will celebrate in our favourite fashion: by demonstrating the pop star’s link to the Jewish community. The self-described “honorary Jew” may be an international star, with her recent release “No Tears Left To Cry” in 3rd place in the current billboard charts, but the Boca…
Well, it’s been a big week for Irving Berlin. Berlin, the master songwriter who immigrated to America with his family at the turn of the century to escape pogroms, was named on Tuesday in a national conversation about whether our president knows the lyrics to his song “God Bless America.” On the very same day,…
A Romanian pop star and former beauty queen posted lewd photographs of herself, taken at the Bucharest Holocaust memorial. Xonia, who recently released her single “Jiggling,” posted two photographs of herself wearing a skimpy outfit and posing in provocative positions — against the backdrop of a memorial dedicated to the 270,000 Romanian Jews killed in…
A trio of sisters wearing hot pink hijabs piles into a dusty white Jeep and rambles across the desert. At home in the village, a man with a closely-cropped white beard shaded by his military cap whips a lash upon the cracked, sandy ground, while an elderly woman with sunken eyes and gold-painted fingernails puffs…
It’s astounding how much Yiddish has infiltrated today’s popular culture. From classic musicals like “Fiddler on the Roof” to sitcoms like Seinfeld, some words and phrases of Ashkenazi Jews’ native tongue have become Americanized, naturalized, and sometimes clichéd. So, when Public Enemy released its latest album, “Man Plans, God Laughs,” emblazoned with , we decided…
Sir Paul McCartney recently released “New,” his first album of original rock songs since 2007’s “Memory Almost Full.” Given the 71-year-old McCartney’s love affair with all things Jewish for the past half-century — including collaborators, business associates, girlfriends and wives — the title could well be meant as a transliteration of the all-purpose Jewish word…
The line on Bob Dylan is that he never released his best material. Whether or not that’s entirely true, the best evidence is surely the period from 1967 to 1974 — from the motorcycle accident that ended Dylan’s second, electric incarnation, to the comeback hit “Blood on the Tracks.” During this period, Dylan and The…
Just about every anecdote from Warren Zevon’s storied rock ’n’ roll career seems steeped in legend. Take the recording of his biggest hit, “Werewolves of London.” Zevon’s longtime collaborator Jorge Calderon recalled finding producer Waddy Wachtel in the back office of the Sound Factory recording studio, “sporting a sad and worried face” because they had…
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