by Amanda Walgrove The Shondes is a Brooklyn-based indie band that has garnered attention for their gritty Riot Grrrl rock sound, Jewish influences and political messages. Comprised of Louisa Solomon, Temim Fruchter, Elijah Olberman, and Fureigh, the band has released two albums since their formation in...
by Amanda Walgrove The Shondes is a Brooklyn-based indie band that has garnered attention for their gritty Riot Grrrl rock sound, Jewish influences and political messages. Comprised of Louisa Solomon, Temim Fruchter, Elijah Olberman, and Fureigh, the band has released two albums since their formation in...
By Symi Rom-Rymer A group of young Hasidic men hang out at the foot of the subway stairs at a station in Brooklyn, New York. Soon, another one joins them and the conversation quickly turns heated. “Do you bite your thumb at us...
by Gabriel Weinstein My grandfather always chuckled when we spoke about the Galicia region of northwestern Ukraine and southeastern Poland. He’d cackle, “Galicia! We used to make fun of people from there in Rovno [his Ukrainian hometown].” His depiction was a bit skewed. He failed to...
By Merav Levkowitz For 25 years, the American klezmer band The Klezmatics has been unable to sustain itself solely from their Yiddish klezmer music. The reason is not for lack of talent: In 2006, they won a Grammy award for Best Contemporary World Music Album for...
By Jeremy Gillick Following celebrations in Kiev in honor of the 150th anniversary of Sholom Aleichem's birth, developers destroyed his house. The great Yiddish writer would not have been surprised. Many of his stories dealt with misfortune, luck and the arbitrariness of life. He himself fell...
By Jeremy Gillick Sholom Aleichem, the revered 19th century writer whose earnest, incredulous and good-natured humor came to define a century of Jewish jokes, is back. Not resurrected--Aleichem was never much of a believer, though he undoubtedly would have welcomed the Messiah into the world like...
By Jeremy Gillick “Rise and go to the town of the killings,” Bialik wrote of Kishinev, the Moldovan city, formerly Russian, where a 1903 Easter Sunday blood libel famously escalated into a brutal three-day pogrom. A momentous event, the pogrom both expedited the Jewish exodus from...
By Benjamin Schuman-Stoler [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRhFezNgbDM] NPR reported on Yiddish and Klezmer in Russia today. Judging by the above video, I'd say it's doing just fine. Still corny as ever. Thanks to Heeb for pointing out Rahmfacts.com. Spend some time at the site and learn such brilliant nuggets of dubious...