Jewish celebs, Zohan’s diddy and JDub’s latest
JTA's new music reviewer, Matthue Roth, launches his Shtetl Blaster column with a look at American Jewish celebrities singing old school and Israeli rappers breaking new ground. Read more »
Unusual fans for an unusual metal band
When my heavy-metal friends disclosed their secret pasts, it was a series of revelations: although they were muscly, pierced and dark-alley-nightmare-looking, when they told stories of their childhoods, each was nerdier than the last. Now, Spin Magazine reporter Mordechai Shinefield uncovers the newest of the nü-metal fans’ deep dark secrets: they’re ex-yeshiva boys. Elie Hassan and Brian Brown, both 21, graduated from Baltimore’s Ner Israel, where kids in their dorm sometimes snitched on the pair for indulging their nonkosher music habits. “I would say that 30 to 40 percent of our class knew about [lead singer] Draiman and had heard Disturbed,” says Brown. Now college roommates at the more liberal Yeshiva University in New York, they’re free to enjoy the band in relative peace. That’s right: David Draiman, the lead singer of Disturbed, grew up in the yeshiva system – he attended five schools, and was kicked out of three of them. It’s no surprise to the band’s fans (or rubberneckers) – Draiman has repeatedly thrown Hebrew words, Jewish concepts, and knowing winks to the haredi subset of his audience – but writing lyrics like “Elokai, bury me tonight” is probably not what got Draiman ejected. (Blowing up the rosh yeshiva’s car, on the other hand, might have.) Read more »
Borscht Boss: Brooks Arthur on Catskills nostalgia, Barbra Streisand, and Adam Sandler?
Brooks Arthur started his career as an audio engineer in the 60s, working on “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “The Locomotion,” and “Leader of the Pack” before building up to producing albums for the likes of Liza Minelli and Carole King. He struck up a friendship with a young breakaway comic named Adam Sandler led him to produce Sandler’s ubiquitous “Chanuka Song,” after which they co-wrote possibly the most scatological Chanukah movie ever, Sandler’s “Eight Crazy Nights.” Arthur’s latest venture is The Jewish Songbook, a CD filled with new and veteran performers doing renditions of Jewish songs. Most hearken back to the Borscht Belt melodies of the 1940s and 50s, but there is also the liturgical (Barbra Streisand doing “Avinu Malkeinu"), the modern Israeli patriotic ("Hatikvah"), and the unexpected—Adam Sandler doing a version of “Hinei Ma Tov” that not only isn’t a joke song, but also manages to showcase his competent classical tenor. JTA spoke to Brooks Arthur the day before the CD’s release about the record, the performers, and how it felt to sing alongside Barbra Streisand. [audio:/images/archive/060408_arthur_roth.mp3] Audio sound funny? Upgrade your Flash player. To subscribe to JTA’s Behind the News podcast, click here. Read more »
RSS Feed Breaking News
Updated 11/08/09 @ 03:17PM EDT
- The alleged Fort Hood shooter is a conservative Muslim, not an extremist, says an uncle who lives in the West Bank.
- A pro-Palestinian group is staging a weeklong protest at two British supermarket chains to force them to stop selling Israeli products.
- A leading Kadima Party member presented a plan to establish a Palestinian state within one year.
- President Obama called on Israelis to continue to pursue peace with the Palestinians in a video message screened during a memorial to Yitzhak Rabin.
- The United Nations secretary-general said he will send the Goldstone report to the U.N. Security Council "as soon as possible."
- Alleged Fort Hood shooter has West Bank relatives
- Op-Ed: President Obama needs to revisit Israel
- Palestinian group staging supermarket boycott
- Mofaz proposes Palestinian state in one year
- Obama calls for peace in Rabin rally address
- Security Council to receive Goldstone ‘soon’
- Yoffie to Reform Jews: Eat less meat, blog more
- Wagner great-grandson objects to Berlin Wall event music
- Obama’s Nobel, Israel’s problem?
- Jews of color come together to explore identity
- FBI: Alleged spy wannabe asked for Israeli citizenship
- Family likely murdered by professional killer
- New signs that Ethiopian aliyah will resume
- U.S. appetite for Israeli food grows
- Female Orthodox scholars helping women talk about sex
- Attacks on J Street as parley approaches
