Arts & Culture | Theater

Not Getting To The Mountaintop

11/16/2010 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

On the surface, no two people seem farther apart than the movie star from Beverly Hills and the famous German refugee rabbi. But Richard Dreyfuss, now appearing as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in Colin Greer’s “Imagining Heschel” at the Cherry Lane Theater, feels a profound kinship with the character he plays.

I.L. Peretz, Melody Maker

11/09/2010 | Ted Merwin | Theater

He may not have achieved the popularity of his fellow Yiddish writer, Sholom Aleichem, but I. L. Peretz (1852-1915) was also a heavyweight of Yiddish literature at the turn of the 20th century. While the author of the “Tevye” stories was known for his folksy brand of humor, Peretz was inspired by chasidic folklore to express the mystical resonances in Jewish tradition.

A Jewish Prophet At The Vatican

11/02/2010 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

At the height of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, America’s most prominent rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, embarked on a secret mission to Rome.

Humanizing The Gaza War

09/28/2010 | Eric Herschthal | Staff Writer | Theater

Last spring, Lawrence Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New Yorker, approached David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, about writing a story on the chances for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Most editors would jump at any story idea by big-name writer, but The New Yorker has luxuries other magazines don’t.

From Lesbian Intermarried Moms To Groucho Marx

09/28/2010 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

OK, they may not be “Fiddler on the Roof.”

But several new musicals debuting at the New York Musical Theater Festival are taking on Jewish themes and characters in a big way.

Caught In The Crossfire In Belfast

09/15/2010 | Ted Merwin | Theater

As the rest of our society turns toward Halloween, we brave our own demons on Yom Kippur, in a particularly Jewish way that points toward the possibility of redemption. In Gavin Kostick’s new play, “This is What We Sang,” presented at the Synagogue for the Arts in Tribeca, five generations of a Jewish family in Belfast search their souls on the Day of Atonement to come to terms with the tangled, century-long past of their people and their region.