Growing up with a Jewish mom and a famous dad he never knew — the jazz musician Roy Ayers
Nabil Ayers' memoir reflects on family, identity and his journey to connect with a Black father who was 'really just DNA'
Nabil Ayers' memoir reflects on family, identity and his journey to connect with a Black father who was 'really just DNA'
In the 'Dirty Dancing' star's memoir, she dishes on her fateful surgery and her Jewish identity
I did it all backward. Instead of taking my research trips before writing my book, like any normal historian would have, I’d waited. Only after I had completed my first draft of the book did I finally make my way to Lithuania and Vilna (now Vilnius), the capital of Lithuania during its brief moment of…
Read this article in Yiddish My father, Ben Perkal (Berche, in Yiddish) was a kind person and a devoted family man, but he may have been the worst shoemaker in Poland. OK, that may be a slight exaggeration. But he was surely the worst shoemaker in Ostralenka, the shtetl in northeastern Poland that he grew…
“When my father was nearly on his deathbed, a last effort at surgery was attempted, and a dutiful surgeon, asking him routine questions, inquired of the cause of his parents’ death. “Gas,” my father replied. The puzzled surgeon asked him to explain himself. “Gas chamber,” my father said. ”They died of gas chamber.” My brother…
On a recent segment of “The Today Show,” a cadre of well-coiffed hosts discussed the life of Eddie Jaku, a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor and the author of “The Happiest Man on Earth,” a memoir about his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Grainy photos of concentration camp prisoners alternated with clips from an interview with Jaku and videos…
Like President-elect Joe Biden, I am embarking on a challenging new path in my 70s. In early 2021, the Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western New York will have a Zoom staged reading of my play “Finding Mr. Rightstein.” A June 8, 2020 in-person reading there was canceled because of the pandemic. The artistic director, who…
Todd Fisher, the brother of late actress Carrie Fisher, best known for her portrayal of Princess Leia in “Star Wars,” has just released a tell-all memoir, “My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie,” in which he delves into the intimate details and memories of his relationship with iconic mother Debbie Reynolds and equally famous…
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