JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Editor’s Note: Woody Guthrie would have turned 109 today. To honor the legendary songwriter, we look back on his little-known history as a writer of Hanukkah songs. 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…
This article was originally published on September 2, 2009. It was re-published for the 70th anniversary of the Peekskill Riots on August 26, 2019, and lightly edited to reflect the new anniversary of the event. Peekskill, New York, on the bank of the Hudson River, was home to L. Frank Baum, the author of “The…
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…
In honor of Bob Dylan’s 73rd birthday on Saturday (May 24), Maariv asked four Israeli singer-songwriters — Eran Tzur, Sun Tailor, Dan Toren and Uzi Ramirez — to write about the “defining moment” in Dylan’s influence on them personally “as musicians, artists and listeners.” Each brief contribution is accompanied by a musical clip that the…
Here’s a little video collection I put together for May Day 2010, with some updates, to help get in the holiday spirit. Fortunately, it’s still relevant. Unfortunately, that’s because we haven’t made much progress in the interim toward economic justice. First of all, the anthem of Zionist labor, Chaim Nachman Bialik’s “Birkat Ha’am” (“The People’s…
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” people who don’t know much about Bob Dylan have said, in response to his surprising, patriotic Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler. To them, Dylan is still someone he never was: a Sixties icon, a protest singer who would never sell out. “Sad, sad, sad,” moaned one of my Facebook…
Woody Guthrie sang of America’s “redwood forests” and “gulf stream waters.” The traveling troubadour and American folk poet electrified a nation with his paeans to America’s indomitable spirit and beauty. Oklahoma-born and Texas-raised, he also ignited mighty debates with songs and writings that took on the establishment and sought to elevate the working masses. His…
Sebastiano Conca: ‘Alexander the Great in the Temple of Jerusalem’ (1737) / Wikimedia Commons What follows is a Forward editorial in celebration of Hanukkah from back in December 2004, when I was editor. I was rather proud of it then, and I think the message holds up pretty well. Down at the bottom is an…
