Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
(JTA) — A Dutch rapper who sang that he “sits on money like a Jew” and “deports” greedy women defended the text as a “compliment” devoid of any anti-Semitic undertones. Ali Bouali, a best-selling performer of Moroccan descent who is also known in the Netherlands as an activist against discrimination, defended these lines from his…
British singer George Michael, who became one of the pop idols of the 1980s with Wham! and then forged a career as a successful solo artist with sometimes sexually provocative lyrics, died at his home in England on Sunday. He was 53. In the mid-1980s, “Wham! was one of the most successful pop duos ever,…
I just received a text from my guitarist, urging me to change our band name from “Iraqis in Pajamas” to something else — anything else, as long as it has no Middle Eastern connotation. A young Muslim woman at the local university was just attacked and hit in the head, he informed me, and the…
There are very few people who may honestly be referred to as “national treasures” — someone whose contributions are not to one or another group within our community, but to all of us together: old and young, wise and simple, religiously observant and less so. Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker, who died November 20 at the…
The family of the late Polish-Jewish man whose story inspired the Academy Award-winning 2002 film “The Pianist” has won on appeal a defamation suit over claims that he was a Nazi collaborator. According to Agence France Press, the widow and son of Wladyslaw Szpilman said Monday they have won their suit against the author and…
In the spring of 1947, a small group of Hazzanim joined together to lay the foundation for a cantorial association designed to address the immediate and anticipated future concerns of practicing cantors in North America. Their most pressing objective was to professionalize the Cantorate. In doing so, they had to establish the Cantor as a…
I was 16 when I first posted a video of myself beatboxing to Chris Brown and T-Pain’s “Kiss Kiss” on YouTube. Few things embarrass me more than watching the video or knowing that thousands of people have watched me attempt vocal percussion when I should have just moved on. And yet, 8 years, 171 videos,…
Nissim Baruch Black’s religious path has been winding. He was raised a non-practicing Sunni Muslim, converted to Christianity at age 14, embraced Messianic Christianity as an adult — and ultimately converted to Orthodox Judaism between 2010 and 2012. Seattle-born, he immigrated to Israel last year. Black is also an accomplished rapper — and this week…
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