For those who love the classic tunes of the so-called American “songbook” and particularly the timeless melodies and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin, Michael Feinstein’s new book, The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs is much more than heartfelt homage by an outsider or Johnny-come-lately to a remarkable musical era that is…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, December 31, 1926 by Frederick Griffin You can’t imagine the gigantic United States with all its doughboys and buddies being scared of a woman. It is like a man being scared of a mouse. And yet we have the fact that they were so frightened over there by the presence…
Not surprisingly, American author Michael Chabon originally developed the premise, story and characters for his latest novel, Telegraph Avenue, as the script for a 1999 television pilot that never got off the ground. Like many of his previous books, including his 2000 Pulitzer-prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Telegraph Avenue is brimming…
◊ Finding the Jewish Shakespeare, The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin, by Beth Kaplan, has been newly released in paperback by Syracuse University Press, Spring 2012. One of the great moments in Yiddish theatre occurred the evening the curtain opened upon actor Jacob Adler in the role of “the Jewish King Lear,” as envisioned by…
It has been 50 years since a group of rabbis in Baltimore staged a protest against the racial segregation that was still a sad fact of life in many parts of America, including various restaurants in Baltimore. In February 1962, a time of heightened civil rights protests, the rabbis decided to target two local restaurants,…
In lieu of baseball cards, some American Orthodox boys have turned in recent decades to collecting Torah personality trading cards that feature images of revered “Gedolim” (Giants) from Moses Maimonides to Rabbi Moishe Feinstein, with lists of famous published works on the back in lieu of batting statistics. The happy invention of a Baltimore accountant,…
From the Globe and Mail, July 2000 Painted a bright red, the 201-year-old John C. Backhouse Mill seems as conspicuous against its background of grass and trees as the British Redcoats must have been when engaged in combat with the Americans during the War of 1812. A historic property that was restored to pristine condition…
Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in 1982, and remains, 30 years later, one of the most interesting family histories this reviewer has read. The reason is not so much that Burton Bernstein was the brother of a celebrity, the great composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, but because he treated…
If you have roots in Jewish Portland, you may be interested in a recent book — Stories From Jewish Portland, by Polina Olsen (The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2011). Olsen has collected many stories of the Jews of Portland. Their roots go back to the gold rush and their heart is the “old neighbourhood” of…
The 100th anniversary of the S.S. Titanic disaster is almost upon us. The legendary British ship sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912, after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 people aboard perished in the tragedy, which has been memorialized in books, popular…
