Submitted Stories by Daniel Sieradski RSS Feed Stories Submitted by Daniel Sieradski
Portman references Agriprocessors raid in Oscar presentation
For those who missed last night’s Academy Awards, one of the highlights of the evening came when Jewish actors Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller took the stage to present the award for cinematography. Read more »
Israeli Consulate to hold public press conference via Twitter
The Consulate General of Israel in New York will be holding a public press conference about the war in Gaza via Twitter. Read more »
Livestream Monday: The Economy’s Impact on Jewish Studies
Tune in Monday at 2 p.m. for a panel discussion from the Association for Jewish Studies’ annual convention on the economy’s impact on the field of Jewish Studies. Read more »
YU Ethics & Kashrut Live Stream Tonight
Tune in tonight at 7PM to watch YU’s panel on ethics and kashrut live online. Read more »
Covenant Foundation 18th Anniversary Celebration Live!
Tomorrow, the Convent Foundation, one of this country’s preeminent supporters of Jewish education initiatives, will celebrate their 18th anniversary with a conference at the UJA-Federation of New York. The event’s overarching themes are described as “Dissolving Boundaries” and “Seizing the Future: Promoting Jewish Learning, Community Building and Civic Engagement.” I will be joining a panel on the latter subject. Watch this space for a live broadcast from the conference beginning at 10:30AM on Tuesday, October 27. The speaker schedule follows. 10:30AM Welcome – Harlene Appelman Dissolving Boundaries: An Introduction – Martha Minow and Liz Lerman Small Dances about Big Ideas: Excerpts – Liz Lerman Dance Exchange 12:15-1:00PM Potential of New Media and Film – Carlton Evans, Barry Joseph, Rafi Santo, Daniel Sieradski Making The Case for Uncommon Connections – Liz Lerman and Martha Minow Read more »
Let there be G-dcast
From the mind of Jewish t-shirt maven Sarah Lefton comes G-dcast, a new animated series of Torah commentaries as told by a different Jewish celebrity each week. Check out the first episode below, which features Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. New episodes will be posted each Monday at g-dcast.com. Read more »
Benyamin Cohen debuts with #1 Jewish bestseller
Former American Jewish Life editor Benyamin Cohen’s book, “My Jesus Year,” debuted today at #1 on Amazon.com’s Jewish bestseller list. The book catalogs the year Cohen, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, spent visiting Southern churches while trying to figure out why he found synagogue so unfulfilling. Publisher’s Weekly has called it “a delicious olio of guilt, longing, surprise, wonder, unease and of course humor.” You can order the book online here, but if you happen to pick it up in a bookstore, take a photo of the display and send it to Cohen. He’ll pay you back with a shout-out on his blog. Cohen also spent a half-hour with NPR’s Lynn Neary yesterday discussing the book. You can tune in to a recording of the broadcast here. Read more »
Rap artist reps for French-Israelis
Meet Shmoolik, A.K.A. Shmouel Halimi, the French-Israeli Chasidic hip-hop artist and graphic designer. As a rhyme spouting ba’al teshuva Chabadnik, the comparisons to Matisyahu are inevitable, but Shmoolik is very much in a class of his own. Now that you’ve met the man, hear the music. Here’s the video for his track, “Les Enfants d’Israël.” Written and recorded in the midst of the Gaza disengagement, the track samples Serge Gainsbourg’s 1967 coming-out-as-a-Jew song, “Les Soldats Et Le Sable.” Read more »
JTA Exclusive: Diwon’s The Beat Guide to Yiddish
Courtesy of Diwon, the artist formerly known as DJ Handler and otherwise known as the executive director of Modular Moods and Shemspeed.com, comes this fresh mix of pop, hip-hop, electronica and… Yiddish? The Beat Guide to Yiddish [audio:/images/archive/TheBeatGuideToYiddishbyDiwon.mp3] Click the play button above to listen, or right-click here and click ‘Save link as...’ to download, exclusively from JTA. We spoke to “That Yemenite Kid” and asked him what’s up with this unusual release. JTA: As an artist and producer you’ve focused on highlighting Sephardic and Yemenite Jewish music as an alternative to what some see as the Ashkenazic domination of the Jewish cultural scene. With that in mind, what’s a nice Yemenite kid like you doing in a Yiddishe place like this? Diwon: I’m half-Yemenite. My other side is Ashkenaz. That is the side that came out here. Don’t forget, I started a klezmer punk band in college called Juez. So this really isn’t too far out for me. I think just because of the recent change of my artist name from DJ Handler to Diwon and some of the press around the music, now I’m seen as very Yemenite and the past is sort of washed over. I’m definitely more passionate about the Yemenite music I’m making because I feel that there has already been a big Yiddish and klezmer music revival. At the same time, I don’t know of any Yiddish mixtapes that have ever been made – you know, Yiddish through the eyes of a street mixtape DJ. It was a challenge to take the source material flip it over my own beats and remixes and then throw in some of my friends who are fusing Yiddish with electronic music and what not. Plus that Andrew sisters “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” is so hot. I DJ it in clubs all the time. That in itself was almost reason enough to create this mixtape. I notice you have some Hebrew language stuff in there as well. That’s going to make the Yiddishists angry... Ha! I don’t know. I guess some controversy is good. There is a lot of great classic Yiddish music out there that, beyond revivals from Golem and Socalled, most young Jews today are completely unfamiliar with. Do you see any potential for the reinvigoration of Yiddish music as anything more than a novelty for this generation? I could see why people would say that Socalled is a novelty, but you could argue the music isn’t a novelty because he grew up listening to Yiddish records and this is how he makes Yiddish music – as opposed to say, an artist who put one Yiddish thing on their non-Yiddish album, as a novelty. It’s a tough question to answer since most artists fuse different elements and genres and influences into their compositions. I don’t think that it’s novelty if an artist fuses their tradition into their music if it’s done in a sincere way and not with a smirk. But what about for the consumer? So let’s say your doing Yemenite music isn’t a novelty, it’s an expression of your identity, but for the average music consumer, it’s a novelty. Take Matisyahu for example. Did non-Jews buy his album because he’s a great reggae artist, or because he’s an amusement? I think it depends on the consumer. One who isn’t that familiar with the tradition might buy it as novelty. But someone who knows the music and likes Yiddish or Yemenite music will buy it to expand their collection and for them its not necessarily a novelty purchase. I know non-Jews who bought Matisyahu’s record because they like reggae. But then there are tons that probably bought it off the hype that was fueled by the novelty of it all. But I don’t think any of that matters. If he had put out one record and then went to making regular, non-Jewish reggae, I think it would be different. People would say “what a fake” and “what kind of marketing stunt is this?” But the fact is this is his true expression. He tours the world playing it and he is onto his third record, making it. It’s obvious that he doesn’t view it as a novelty. And the fact that he is still successful at it shows that it’s definitely more than a novelty. That and maybe the fact that he doesn’t wear a suit and a black hat anymore. How’s the Jewish music scene holding up in light of the current economic downturn? Is your label, Modular Moods, surviving, thriving, dying? Well stateside we’re still alright. It’s a bit harder when I tour internationally, but no matter what I’m still going to grind and get as much good music out there as possible. If only to cheer up the people who are down due to the economy. Well, giving away free music helps! Yeah, well music is basically free nowadays anyway, so why try and front? I feel like I give 75% of my music out for free and use the other 25% to fund it all and survive. So what can we expect from Modular Moods in the coming months? Don’t miss the Sephardic Music Festival this Chanukah in NYC, the Shemspeed 40 Days 40 Nights Tour of college campuses in February, and a slew of new songs and albums unlike anything people have ever heard. We ain’t gonna stop now. Read more »
RSS Feed Breaking News
Updated 02/09/12 @ 05:54PM EST
- A poll showed that nearly half of likely voters believed the United States should use military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
- Rabbi Gunther Plaut, a major figure in Reform Judaism, died in Toronto.
- The application for a proposed Hebrew-language charter school was accepted by the District of Columbia Public Charter School board.
- A truck driving calves from Eilat to the Golan Heights was hijacked into the West Bank.
- U.S. Rep. Howard Berman introduced legislation that would allow eligible Israeli nationals to receive non-immigrant investor visas in the United States.
- Poll: Half of U.S. voters back strike on nuclear Iran
- Reform leader Rabbi Gunther Plaut dies
- D.C. Hebrew-language charter school accepted for review
- Op-Ed: Kick the reaction addiction on campus
- Berman moves to grant investor visas to Israelis
- Holy cow! Calves hijacked into Palestinian territory
- Report: Israeli journalist also works for prime minister
- Larry Greenfield tapped to lead JINSA
