Forget
Adam Sandler. Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of Jewish take-offs of popular songs. The Fountainheads have produced
Purim and
Pesach (Passover) covers. The Maccabeats had a good amount of exposure with their
Hanukkah and put out a
Purim, too.
Of course,
not all of these songs are covers.
posted by dzkalman
on Apr 5, 2011 -
8 comments
Henry Roth had one of the most anomalous careers in modern letters: a brilliant novel at age twenty-eight, the incomparable Call It Sleep, lost for thirty years but never quite forgotten, then a torrent of words let loose in his seventies and eighties. ... Roth continued to resist any single explanation for his catastrophic writer's block, but it became evident that it was the incest, and the self-loathing that accompanied it, that threw the biggest roadblock across his path. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Jan 12, 2011 -
7 comments
Debbie Friedman passed away today. She was the most well known and influential composer of Jewish music and litergy in the United States.
The Jerusalem Post says that "Friedman’s music is performed in synagogues around the world more than that of any other modern composer."
Her most well known song is a setting of
Mi Shebeirach, a prayer for healing.
posted by kdern
on Jan 9, 2011 -
24 comments
A story of moose snouts, tenement animal husbandry and Crisco - the Lower East Side.
RAZ: Now, you describe the markets in this part of the Lower East Side, around the Bowery that Mr. Glockner's wife would often go to to find fresh produce, I was amazed to read about what you could get in New York City in the 1860s. I mean, there were a lot of choices.
Ms. ZIEGELMAN: You could buy bear. You could buy moose. And not only moose, you could buy moose snout. This was considered a particular delicacy.
RAZ: By whom?
Ms. ZIEGELMAN: That I don't know. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jun 9, 2010 -
11 comments
Is Facebook chametz? An interview with two rabbis about their
Facebook group, encouraging Jews to consider giving up Facebook for Passover
next week. While the word
"chametz" strictly refers only to leavened bread, which is prohibited during Passover, the group is inspired by a Chassidic interpretation that connects the leavening of bread to an "over-inflated sense of self."
posted by albrecht
on Mar 24, 2010 -
77 comments
What's a Coastie? Two University of Wisconsin undergrads record and post to YouTube an ode to
"Coasties," out-of-state students who live in expensive off-campus apartments, wear Spandex tights with Uggs, spend their parents' money on designer handbags and Starbucks, and -- oh yeah, like 15% of their classmates but only 1 in 200 Wisconsin natives,
are Jews.
Controversy ensues.
posted by escabeche
on Dec 24, 2009 -
143 comments
“We got a bit excited because we realized that people have
collected lots of
dybbuk stories, but
our fragment describes a real event, where you see how they come together and pray in order to exorcise the ghost from a widow,”
[more inside]
posted by ServSci
on Dec 21, 2009 -
11 comments
The Survey of American Jewish Language and Identity reports on the results of an online survey of 25,179 American Jews and 4,874 American Gentiles. Non-Jews say "klutz" but not "schmutz." The more Orthodox you are, the more likely you are to say "Good Shabbos" instead of "Shabbat Shalom." And so much more you'll plotz.
posted by escabeche
on Nov 10, 2009 -
87 comments
Mountain air, clear as wine
And the scent of pines
Brought by the twilight breeze
With the sound of bells
Shortly before the Six Day War of 1967 an amateur singer
performed [YT] an elegy for the then-divided city of Jerusalem "locked in a dream ... with a wall in its heart".
[more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia
on May 21, 2009 -
8 comments
Chanukkah is the story of a group of warriors (the Maccabees, later the
Hasmoneans, led by Mattathias) who rose up against the Greeks (the
Seleucids), united the Jews, reclaimed the Temple (
Beit HaMikdash), and then lit one day's supply of oil which miraculously lasted for eight days, started a brand new holiday called Chanukkah, and brought Jewish sovereignty and peace to the land of Israel. Except that almost every part of that story is either wrong or completely misleading.
[more inside]
posted by andoatnp
on Dec 21, 2008 -
66 comments
In Mamas Kitchen was born in the experience of living in New York where a
bodega exists within blocks of a
Jewish deli which is around the corner from an
Italian salumeria which shares space with
Chinatown which abuts
Soho's gourmet stores. While this speaks of the legendary variety available in New York, it also tells of similarity, for in every bodega, every salumeria is someone shopping for the food that sustains physical life with a
recipe that nourishes our hearts.
posted by netbros
on Dec 15, 2008 -
11 comments
Menorahs glowed in almost every living room window during Hanukkah. Hasidic Jews streamed down the streets on Friday night and Saturday morning, walking to and from synagogue services. "There was total freedom," marvels Magda Brown, 81, who survived Auschwitz. But inside their homes, at night, the survivors—and their families—were roiled by their pasts. The rest of Skokie did not know the troubles that stirred behind the immaculate facades of the close-packed houses.
[more inside]
posted by scody
on Dec 14, 2008 -
5 comments
Almost no traditional Christmas carols were written by Jews (though there have
been rumors). But sometimes it seems like almost all the best 20th century Christmas songs were. Many people are
dimly aware of this, but few know its full extent. I have compiled a list, with representative performances.
[more inside]
posted by grobstein
on Dec 13, 2008 -
67 comments
Sadie tells Maurice, "You’re a schmuck! You always were a schmuck and you always will be a schmuck! You look, act and dress like a schmuck! You’ll be a schmuck until the day you die! And if they ran a world-wide competition for schmucks, you would be the world’s second biggest schmuck!" "Why only second place?" Maurice asks. "Because you’re a schmuck!" Sadie screams.
Some Jewish humor.
posted by serazin
on Dec 7, 2008 -
27 comments
Virtual Vaudeville [shockwave] Watch a 3D simulation of legendary comedian Frank Bush in a vaudeville performance from a variety of perspectives. Switch between any of eight perspectives at any time and read the extensive hypermedia notes to gain a richer understanding of the performance in its historical context.
posted by tellurian
on Sep 4, 2008 -
11 comments
A linguist and a sociologist at Hebrew Union College have teamed up to
track the inroads made into American English by words and idioms from traditionally Jewish languages, including Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and Hebrew.
They've created an online survey and are looking for people from all religious and ethnic backgrounds to answer a few questions about their word choices, phrasing, and pronunciation. They're also trying to determine whether certain linguistic quirks usually attributed to Yiddish's influence are actually carried over from Jewish ancestors' speech patterns and accents, or whether they're merely an artifact from growing up in or near New York City. [
via]
posted by Asparagirl
on Jul 23, 2008 -
65 comments
Forgotten Architects: In the 1920s and early 1930s, German Jewish architects created some of the greatest modern buildings in Germany, mainly in the capital Berlin. A law issued by the newly elected German National Socialist Government in 1933 banned all of them from practicing architecture in Germany. In the years after 1933, many of them managed to emigrate, while many others were deported or killed under Hitler’s regime.
Pentagram Papers 37: Forgotten Architects is a survey of
43 of these architects and their groundbreaking work.
[more inside]
posted by sveskemus
on Jun 16, 2008 -
10 comments
