Arts & Culture | Music

Aaron Novik’s ‘Secrets’

06/12/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Music

Rabbi Eleazar of Worms was a 13th-century scholar whose life was torn apart when two Crusaders broke into his house and killed his wife and three children. After that terrible incident in 1196, he wrote numerous ethical texts counseling cheerfulness, patience and love for humanity, suggesting a greatness of spirit that all but passes understanding. But he also delved deep into the mystical vein of Judaism, authoring countless kabbalistic texts including new systems of gematria (the numerological interpretation of Torah) and a singular work called “The Secrets of Secrets.”

Fight For Your Right To … Be Jewishly Proud

05/09/2012 | Andrew Furman | Special To The Jewish Week | Music

It never would have occurred to me that the passing of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch (aka MCA) would hit me so hard. Yet I’ve been awfully sad ever since reading the headline across the CNN crawl last week. It’s not something I’ve contemplated much until Yauch’s death, at 47 from cancer. But the Beastie Boys really did mean something to me when they first emerged on the national scene almost three decades ago.

‘Yakety Yak’ At Eldridge Street

02/28/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Music

Mike Stoller doesn’t know how many songs he wrote with Jerry Leiber.

“Several hundred probably,” he says. “I never kept count.”

The Sound Of Ginsberg’s ‘Kaddish’

02/14/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Music

It is purely coincidence, no doubt, that Allen Ginsberg wrote his epic poem “Kaddish” three years after the death of his mother Naomi, and eclectic jazz guitarist Bill Frisell began work on his musical accompaniment to that poem three years after the death of his mother Jane.

The Voices Of Terezin

02/01/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Music

For Jewish-American children of European immigrants of a certain age, the Shoah is more personal reality than historical memory. If they work in the arts, it is an open question that hangs in the air until it is finally faced. For composer and cantor Gerald Cohen, the time is now.

Speech Pathology

01/31/2012 | Eric Herschthal | Staff Writer | Music

No one can seem to get over the fact that Ben Marcus, the scion of avant-garde literature and its most impassioned defender, recently published a fairly traditional novel, “The Flame Alphabet.” It has all the trappings of normative fiction — a plot, emotionally developed characters, even some good old-fashioned drama.