Klezmer, Yiddish, and How I Became a Cultural Ambassador for the Jews
Growing up, my newfound love of Yiddish music became my cultural ambassador moment, my way of sharing a Jewish cultural aspect with my broader community.
Growing up, my newfound love of Yiddish music became my cultural ambassador moment, my way of sharing a Jewish cultural aspect with my broader community.
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.
Read about the early life of a young immigrant to the United States before he went on to compose songs that shaped the American music scene for decades.
On Thursday, Jan. 21, hundreds of viewers tuned in to Facebook to watch “Songs for All of Us: A Gathering of Hope and Purpose,” an inspired and powerful hour of song, spoken word, and prayer streamed live.
Two Jewish musicians recently launched Harmony in Unison, a new Facebook group that offers live original music, five nights a week, performed on a virtual stage for an audience of 8,500 Facebook users – and growing.
On the sixth yahrzeit of Debbie Friedman’s passing, I want to pay tribute to my amazing friend and colleague, and a gifted spiritual leader.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”