Related Blog Posts on Jewish Music

A Healing Journey: First For Me, Now For Others

I first found my voice at a dying woman’s bedside during a unit of clinical pastoral education. I had been paged to the neurology ICU for a family struggling to say goodbye to their mother, who was in the final stages of brain cancer.

The Hidden History of "I Have a Little Dreidel"

Albert Stern (JTA)

Samuel E. Goldfarb penned “I Have a Little Dreidel”, while his older brother composed “Shalom Aleichem.” To use a Christian equivalent, it would be like having one brother write “Jingle Bells” and another compose “Silent Night.”

Remembering Leonard Cohen

Courtney Naliboff

Leonard Cohen, the craggy-voiced singer songwriter died on November 10 at the age of 82, leaving behind a legacy of music that transcends musical genres, echoing his life as a spiritual seeker.

What Do Jews Have to Do with Jazz? Plenty!

Audrey Merwin

If you love jazz and Jewish culture, as I do, it seems only natural to seek out connections between the two. That’s exactly what a select group of jazz lovers in New Jersey did this past fall and winter, bringing to the fore the exceptional exhibit, Jazz, Jews and African Americans: Cultural Intersections in Newark and Beyond. The show was a collaboration of the Institute of Jazz Studies (Rutgers University-Newark), New Jersey Performing Arts Center, WBGO, the Jewish Museum of New Jersey, New Jersey City University, and Congregation Ahavas Sholom, an historic synagogue in Newark that houses the museum.

How a Jewish Girl from Philly One-Upped Elvis

Rabbi Stephen Lewis Fuchs

In 1956 when Elvis’ songs – “Don’t Be Cruel,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” and “Love Me Tender” – were hitting number one on Your Hit Parade, a Jewish girl from Philadelphia grabbed the top spot from the King. Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg – better known as Gogi Grant – the eldest of six children born to Russian-Jewish parents, reigned for five weeks at number one with “The Wayward Wind.”