About five years ago, The Rolling Stones — who performed their first ever concert in London on this date in 1992 — took the stage at HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv. That event represented more than just the world’s greatest and longest-running rock band’s first concert in Israel. It also marked one small victory in the war…
Tim Burton’s remake for Disney of “Dumbo” about an elephant whose oversized ears enable him to fly, has received mixed reviews. Some filmgoers prefer the classic 1941 version, also from Disney. Yet indisputably, the story for both originated in a book published in 1939 by Helen Aberson (1907-1999), a Syracuse-born writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin….
The nominees for the 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony have been announced, and as in past years, it’s a diverse if somewhat bizarre group, ranging from commercial heavy-metal group Def Leppard to Detroit proto-punks the MC5 to pop-R&B megastar Janet Jackson to English art-rockers Radiohead. Trying to make sense of the…
The pancake is an ancient, primal delicacy that has traversed the globe and inserted itself into many a culture, from Danish to Roman to Jewish. When we speak of Jewish pancakes, as we are compelled to on this National Pancake Day of wonders, we speak of latkes, that iconic Ashkenazi innovation. Latkes are potato pancakes,…
Upcoming Backward issues will feature a smorgasbord of riveting features. INCLUDING Q+A: Jewish polygamist in Nevada sick of mothers-in-law, mother-in-law jokes. Weddings: Malka Itonai, our royal correspondent, reports on Meghan Markle — still “not Jewish,” plans huppah. REGULAR FEATURES Silver Linings: We have good news from the Jewish world Go Know! Nazis still exist! Still…
How many Jews finish Shabbat dinner and retire to the living room for an intellectual showdown in the form of a rousing Scrabble tournament? There’s a long history of Jews playing Scrabble, and the relationship between the two, like any relationship, has had its share of ups and downs. It was the early ’90s when…
Just after midnight on Aug 23, 1927, 90 years ago today, the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were sent to the electric chair in Boston’s Charlestown State Prison. Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian immigrants who formed part of a radical anarchist milieu, had been convicted of the 1920 murders of a shoe-factory paymaster and the…
Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, the three most famous Confederate heroes, have hundreds of memorials and monuments in public spaces throughout the United States dedicated in their memory. Judah Philip Benjamin, the most significant Jewish political figure in the United States during the 19th century — often called the “brains of the…
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