Editor’s Note: This is the first in a multi-part series that will run throughout the next several months on the thoughts behind Seattle Symphony director Gerard Schwarz’s final season. “When you do what you do for the right reasons, it usually works. Not always. But usually.” Seattle Symphony music directorContinue Reading
Without doubt, Andy Statman is the creator of a uniquely American fusion music — call it jazz, spiritual, multicultural, or whatever. For the first time since 1999, Statman performs in Seattle on Nov. 30 to benefit Chabad at the University of Washington. The show anchors a three-city Pacific Northwest tourContinue Reading
We’ve been getting some pretty good music in the mail these days, so we’ve given a few a listen so you can post them on the tunes section of your Hanukkah list. ‘Til Chelm Freezes Over What The Chelm What The Chelm, Inc. What The Chelm, the nine-member klezmer bandContinue Reading
November is a cruel month. The weather starts to turn from the charming autumn to downright chilly. All those gorgeous red and gold leaves on the trees have turned brown and become a nuisance to be raked up. And like the second quarter of a marathon, the school year isContinue Reading
Eli Rosenblatt is a unique musical fixture in Seattle — a feat that’s a direct result of the nature of Rosenblatt’s music, which is poignantly and accurately described on his MySpace page as “eclectic.” Indeed, Rosenblatt’s new self-titled album kicks off with consecutive songs in Hebrew, English, then Spanish. All,Continue Reading
By Arthur Wolak, Special to JTNewsContinue Reading
It took seven years for Yann Martel to write his most recent book, Beatrice and Virgil: A Novel (Spiegel & Grau, 2010). The story began as a two-act play that served as an allegory to the Holocaust, from which he took fragments to use in his novel. It eventually evolvedContinue Reading
By Eric Nusbaum, Assistant Editor, JTNewsContinue Reading
Mark Richard Schuster did not set out to become an author. But after the Seattle entrepreneur completed development on Mosler Lofts, the Belltown condo project that has become his signature achievement, he felt he had a story worth telling. Schuster’s book, Lofty Pursuits: Repairing the World One Building at aContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews CorrespondentContinue Reading
I was delighted to receive a review copy of Scott Simon’s Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption (Random House, cloth, $22), since I have already been intrigued by his radio essays on the subject. Simon is the host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” and heContinue Reading
Food Simply Southern With a Dash of Kosher Soul, from the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South (cloth, $34.99 plus shipping). The Jewish community of Memphis gained some notoriety with the publication of Tova Mirvis’ novel The Ladies Auxiliary, but they make up for it with this big bookContinue Reading
BOSTON (JTA) — Rhyming verse, lively family scenes, a cute pig who eats kosher pickles — and yes, menorahs, latkes and the Maccabees — are featured in a new crop of Hanukkah books for children written by some of the country’s most popular award-winning writers. Eight Winter Nights Laura KraussContinue Reading
“All I want are high heels, high heels,” fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi once said. “If I was a girl, I’d wear a lot of high heels. High stiletto heels.” With Jews having such a deep history in fashion and the textile trade, it should be no surprise that Seattle’s JewishContinue Reading
A classic Jewish tale of love and darkness, S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk has been the crown jewel of Yiddish theater since its first performance by the Vilna Troupe in 1920. Nearly a century and hundreds of performances later, Seattle’s Music of Remembrance will perform the famous play’s long-hidden original scoreContinue Reading
Jewish lore has a rich history of the supernatural, from the clay golems whose creators bring them to life to dybbuks, spirits from the afterlife who inhabit weak bodies to send messages from the great beyond. One author had an idea that kicked around in his head for years: ToContinue Reading
History is written by the victors, the saying goes. But in the case of Nazi Germany, that has not been the case. History was not merely written by the Nazis, it was filmed. And long after the war, researchers continued to rely upon Nazi footage as historical record. Yael Heronski’sContinue Reading
