“The interesting thing about many short stories is that they are wonderful live performance texts,” said Kurt Beattie, artistic director for Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre. ACT, in conjunction with Town Hall Seattle, will perform dramatic readings of short stories by Jewish American authors on Sun., Sept. 12 at Town Hall.Continue Reading
Salanio’s imitation of Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice makes any modern theatergoer cringe: “I never heard a passion so confused, / So strange, outrageous, and so variable, / As the dog Jew did utter in the streets: / “˜My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! / FledContinue Reading
Author Jonathan Tropper, whose bestselling This is Where I Leave You just came out in paperback, doesn’t try to be funny. But that didn’t keep this novel about a family that comes together to sit shiva after the death of its patriarch — a serious subject if anyone can thinkContinue Reading
Genre-bending bands are nothing new. For decades The Clash fused punk with reggae. The Pogues have similarly drawn on punk rock energy to deliver their interpretations of Irish pub music. In the past decade or so, we have seen an increasing number of bands that have fused both Ashkenazi andContinue Reading
The Fall of a Sparrow: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner , By Dina Porat; translated by Elizabeth Yuval (Stanford University Press, 2009). Abba Kovner — ghetto resistance commander in Vilna during World War II, leader in the Brichah movement that brought the remnant of European Jewry to Palestine,Continue Reading
We all know about Gerard Schwarz, conductor. Lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about Gerard Schwarz, composer. Schwarz’ latest work, a “Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano” (Horn Trio for short), will receive its world premiere at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival on Mon., July 26 at Benaroya Hall.Continue Reading
Kinky Friedman first rose to fame in the early 1970s for his satirical country music act, which he performed with his band Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jew Boys. Since then, Friedman, 65, has authored 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction, founded an animal rescue organization, run for governor ofContinue Reading
“There’s just something about music,” says Michele Yanow, that puts people in touch with their roots. Yanow, a lifelong choral singer, successful entrepreneur, and busy mother of two is the founder of the Seattle Jewish Chorale, a young organization that strives to harness the power of Jewish choral music toContinue Reading
“There is no shortcut to certainty,” says Gbenga Akinnagbe, in character as the solo actor who portrays the stories of 11 Seattle citizens in The Thin Place, a play premiering at Intiman Theatre that runs through June 13. One of the characters is Isaac, a young Pentecostal African American, whoContinue Reading
Novelist Dani Shapiro examines her own life in her second memoir, Devotion (Harper, cloth, $24.99), her quest for religious and spiritual meaning in particular. Raised Orthodox, the product of a religious father and an anti-religious mother, we learn early on that the author has chosen a life free of religion,Continue Reading
Biographical Documentary USA English Language with limited subtitles Tues., May 25, 7 p.m. — Harvard Exit Thurs. May 27, 4:30 p.m. — SIFF Cinema Rating: Excellent One of the greatest benefits of attending the Seattle International Film Festival is the opportunity for exposure to educational documentaries profiling noteworthy people andContinue Reading
Drama based on factual event USA English language, with minimal subtitles Sat., May 22, 9:30 p.m. — Pacific Place Cinema Sun., May 23, 4 p.m. — Pacific Place Cinema Rating: Average In the late 1990s a story broke about the arrest of a group of Chassidic Jews who had beenContinue Reading
NEW YORK (JTA) — Early on in the Talmudic tractate of Taanit, Rabbi Yitzchak causes a bit of a stir when, in the name of Rabbi Yochanan, he declares: “Jacob our father did not die.” Rav Nachman rejects the idea with a sharp retort, asking: “Was it then for nothingContinue Reading
Known to cinema fans from his soundtrack for the 1991 film Tous les Matins du Monde/All the Mornings of the World, composer Jordi Savall’s 40-year career combines scholarship, entertainment, and visionary goodwill with virtuoso performances both in concert and on hundreds of recordings, many from his own label, Alia Vox.Continue Reading
The poetry of teenaged Jewish boys imprisoned in the TerezÃn concentration camp will be given new life in the oratorio Vedem, by composer Lori Laitman and librettist David Mason. Vedem will receive its world premiere at Music of Remembrance’s spring concert on May 10. Laitman believes these lines of Mason’sContinue Reading
Hazzan Isaac Azose’s CD, Ladino Reflections, took just six months to produce, but it took 20 years to dream. His double-disc collection of Ladino folksongs is the cherry atop a lifetime of Sephardic liturgical and cantorial achievements. The CD follows Azose’s far-reaching contributions to the preservation of Turkish and RhodesliContinue Reading
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Public Broadcasting Service will offer U.S. television viewers a concentrated history lesson during Holocaust Remembrance Week, with seven films and documentaries on Jewish death and defiance in the past and on the genocides of the present. Four main films will be aired in prime timeContinue Reading
When JDub Records sent us its first foray into children’s music, an album called Let’s Go Coconuts! by a band called The Macaroons, we knew that by actually transferring it onto our iPod, we would have one of two reactions: We’d either want to throw the device at the wallContinue Reading
In the world of women, shoes can change everything. Women lurk among department store shoe racks, touching, trying, fantasizing. This phenomenon is largely thanks to Beth Levine (1914-2006), the ambitious yet virtually unknown designer responsible for making women’s footwear fashionable in America. “Beth Levine: First Lady of Shoes” showcases aContinue Reading
