09 Mar
Arts & Culture, Latest

Broadway Songwriting Team Celebrate 65 Years of Creative Friendship

“In the theater you are either Jewish, Italian or gay and I chose Jewish,” says Protestant-born lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. during a conference call that includes his long time Jewish collaborator, composer David Shire. “Musical theater is so profoundly Jewish—it’s like living in a Kibbutz—you can’t help becoming Jewish. Also, my wife is Jewish, my children are Jewish and we belong to a temple.”

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12 Jul
Arts & Culture, Latest

The (Soul) Doctor is In

The rabbi is dancing and singing, his congregation swooning, his synagogue…absent. We are watching an actor only pretend to be a rabbi and are sitting in the (not-so) holy confines of a Broadway theatre, watching a preview of the new musical Soul Doctor. The musical chronicles the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (Eric Anderson), focusing on his active years as a “troubadour.”  The show also gives insight into the relationship between Carlebach and the famous jazz singer Nina Simone (Amber Iman), as friends who inspire one another. (The show doesn’t delve into real-life rumors of a romantic relationship). Born in Germany in 1925, Carlebach moved to America in the late 1930s to escape the Nazis. In the U.S., Carlebach excelled as a Torah scholar and was a member of the Lubavitch movement. Carlebach gave up the...

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03 May
Arts & Culture

The Jewish Side of "The Book of Mormon."

by Amanda Walgrove Joseph Smith first published The Book of Mormon in March 1830. About 180 years later, The Book of Mormon made its Broadway debut at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Tag-lined as "God's Favorite Musical," the hysterical satire is unsurprisingly offensive and appalling, but wrapped around a heartfelt and sympathetic tale. Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez of the Tony award-winning and equally groundbreaking Avenue Q, this original musical tells the story of two young men sent to Africa on their Mormon mission. Thrown into a God-loathing culture plagued by AIDS, murder and maggots, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham easily demand sympathy as they naively travel through their own religiously fueled bildungsroman. Lopez, who studied religion at Yale with Harold Bloom, said that he quickly developed an interest...

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03 May
Arts & Culture

The Jewish Side of “The Book of Mormon.”

by Amanda Walgrove Joseph Smith first published The Book of Mormon in March 1830. About 180 years later, The Book of Mormon made its Broadway debut at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Tag-lined as "God's Favorite Musical," the hysterical satire is unsurprisingly offensive and appalling, but wrapped around a heartfelt and sympathetic tale. Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez of the Tony award-winning and equally groundbreaking Avenue Q, this original musical tells the story of two young men sent to Africa on their Mormon mission. Thrown into a God-loathing culture plagued by AIDS, murder and maggots, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham easily demand sympathy as they naively travel through their own religiously fueled bildungsroman. Lopez, who studied religion at Yale with Harold Bloom, said that he quickly developed an interest...

Continue reading