Yisroel Leshes, assistant cantor of New York’s Orthodox Lincoln Square Synagogue, has released a cool, jazzy version of Morris Winchevsky’s Yiddish song, “Di Tsukunft” (“The Future”), which dreams of the day when “di velt vet vern frayer, shener, yinger, nayer” (“the world will be freer, lovelier, younger and newer”). The music video, accompanied by English…
The day after the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, the defeated Democratic candidate, gave a steely-toned concession speech in which she proclaimed her continuing belief in American democracy. She was near tears; many, watching, wept freely. At the time, her words came across as the wrenching final statement of a figure whose successes, failings, strength…
The Venice International Film Festival starts today and runs through September 8. And of course, Jewish directors are bringing their A-game. In competition for the famous Golden Lion award are three pictures by already-celebrated Jewish auteurs. Joel and Ethan Coen are presenting “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” a Netflix-produced Western anthology starring Tim Blake Nelson…
The peripatetic M. Baranov (1864-1942) — pseudonym of the earliest known Forverts travel writer Moyshe Gormidor — was employed by the Forverts starting in 1905. Forward Founder Ab Cahan called him a born satirist and remarkably clear writer specializing in short robust sentences and an edgy sense of humor. A revolutionary from Zhitomir in the…
If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself in Venice during the Biennale, there’s a piece, recently reported on by the New York Times, that seems especially worth your time – Israeli artist Hadassa Goldvicht’s “The House of Life.” “The House of Life,” “a multiscreen video installation that opened this month at the Palazzo Querini Stampalia Museum”…
Princeton professor Mitchell Duneier came to town to talk about his new book, “Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea,” and sign a few copies. But certain events in the week preceding Duneier’s November 12 presentation, at the Chicago Humanities Festival, have added extra weight to a discussion about the nature…
Unknown individuals calling themselves the “Tunisian Fallaga Team” hacked into the website of the Venice Jewish community’s library and archive and posted pro-Islamist and pro-Palestinian messages on its home page. Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, the director of the Renato Maestro Library and Archive, called the incident Monday “in effect, a violent and targeted threat, of a…
In Venice, my wife and I like to stay in the old ghetto, which sits in ideal proximity to sundry picturesque attractions, yet somehow feels insulated and tucked away. My hunch is that the neighborhood’s name, despite its antiquated origin, keeps away the riffraff. “This is where your people used to live,” my wife, Francesca,…
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