Jewniverse Articles Archive - Page 62 of 174

Meet Ethan Hawke’s Jewish Piano Teacher

Seymour Bernstein is a musical genius. He is 88 years old and lives in a charmingly cluttered studio apartment in Manhattan, where he teaches piano and sleeps on a pullout couch. This is where he sat down to film this thoughtful documentary directed by Ethan Hawke, Seymour: An Introduction. Hawke met Seymour at a dinner […]

By Abby Sher

The Strange and Surprising History of the Maxwell House Haggadah

In our worst nightmares, coffee is not kosher for Passover. In early 20th-century America, this nightmare was almost real: Jewish stores mistakenly classified coffee beans as legumes, making them forbidden during Pesach according to Ashkenazi tradition. But then American advertising came to save the day — in the form of the Maxwell House Haggadah. […]

A Classic Seder Song Like You've Never Heard it Before

A Favorite Seder Song Like You’ve Never Heard it Before

Can music change the world? Create peace? For some, that might be marketing copy. For the members of Diwan Saz, an incredibly skilled multi-faith and multi-ethnic 9-piece band, it seems to be an earnestly held belief. Part of its name, “diwan,” means “coming together of people” in Turkish, and Diwan Saz practices what it preaches: […]