Welcoming Shabbat with Adon Olam by Russia's Red Army Choir

The Alexandrov Ensemble, commonly known as the Red Army Choir in the West, is an official army choir of the Russian armed forces. Founded during the Soviet era, the ensemble consists of a male choir, an orchestra, and a dance ensemble.

The Ensemble has entertained audiences both in Russia and throughout the world, performing a range of music including folk tunes, hymns, operatic arias and popular music. The group's repertoire has included The Volga Boatmen's Song, Katyusha, Kalinka, and Ave Maria.

This week we're enlisting them to lead us in singing Adon Olam as we welcome another Shabbat. The video is of a performance at the Sultan's Pool in Jerusalem.

Shabbat shalom!

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Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Danny Kaye - Master of Many Tongues

Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; 1911-1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire novelty songs.

Kaye was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, the youngest of three boys for Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminsky. He was the only son born in the United States.

Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), White Christmas (1954), and The Court Jester (1956).

In many of these movies, Kaye showed a great aptitude for foreign language double-talk, speaking rapidly in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Irish, and English. In this compilation from nine of these movies, he shows off this talent, which a decade later was perfected by Sid Caesar in his television shows.

Enjoy!

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#Throwback Thursday   #TBT

Coming in July: Tevye Served Raw, Fiddler As It Was Written by Sholem Aleichem

Tevye Served Raw, an evening of stories by Sholem Aleichem., is coming to Broadway for only 18 performances in July and August. But it's not a musical.

Some of them are Tevye stories, and they’re beautiful and dramatic and funny.

Some of them are not Tevye stories, and those are just funny.  

But they all come right from the pen of Sholem Aleichem, who is pretty much universally considered the greatest Jewish writer ever.  

The Tevye stories are most famous, of course, as the basis of Fiddler on the Roof.  But the musical watered them down to make them more acceptable to the Broadway audience of its day.  Tevye Served Raw goes back to Sholem Aleichem’s original, and it shows you what they left out of Fiddler.  

It’s about authenticity.

Tevye Served Raw goes much deeper into what life in the shtetl -- where most American Jews’ ancestors come from -- was really like.  Plus you find out what happened to the characters after the plot of the musical ends.   

 

Tevye Served Raw is performed in English and Yiddish-with-English-supertitles.  And unlike the cast of the Yiddish Fiddler that will be playing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage from July 5 through August 26, the cast of Tevye Served Raw can actually speak the language.

Tevye Served Raw has been in development for over two years, and has been performed in Toronto, in Los Angeles, in Kiev, Ukraine, in Bethesda, MD, and in Massachusetts, among other places.  This is its first run in New York.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Remembering Another Side of Charles Krauthammer: Bringing Jewish Music to the Concert Hall

Most of the obituaries and news reports about Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize winning conservative political columnist who died last Thursday, focused on his political commentary and his love for baseball and chess. 

What they didn't write about was the great love that this outspoken supporter of Israel had for classical Jewish music. Together with his wife Robyn, an Australian convert to Judaism, they founded Pro Musica Hebraica in 2008, a project to revive forgotten Jewish classical music from a century ago.

Pro Musica Hebraica’s first concert (on April 10, 2008) featured musicians from the Juilliard School and Itzhak Perlman as a special guest. It celebrated the centenary of the 1908 Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, a group of self-defined Jewish composers from Russia and the first association devoted to Jewish musical traditions. 

Responding to the challenge of European nationalism, the St. Petersburg Society “gave rise to what would become known as Jewish art music—music that deliberately melded Western and Russian classical music with Hasidic melodies, Yiddish folk songs and synagogue chants, capturing the sounds of the towns and villages of the Pale of Settlement.” 

As Charles Krauthammer explained, “It's music that's either consciously or unconsciously drawn from the folk, the klezmer, the liturgical, the shtetl,” and reinterpreted in the spirit of “modern classical sensibility.” 

Here is an excerpt from a Pro Musica Hebraica concert a few years ago to focus on the role of the clarinet in Jewish music.

Enjoy!

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A Joke to Start the Week - "The Missing Teaspoon"

Another Monday, another Joke to Start the Week. Today's joke is more of a story, because it's about five minutes long, longer than most of our weekly jokes. We hope you'll have the patience to watch it through to the end, because we think the payoff is worth it. 

The joke teller is retired real estate agent Norman Ginsberg, one of the original joke tellers at Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Here's the setup: It's Avremel's Bar Mitzvah day, and after services, all the guests are invited back to his house for the reception. And then...

Enjoy!

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Yiddish Under the Stars - Excerpts from a Folksbiene Night in Central Park

Yiddish Under the Stars, an evening of Yiddish and klezmer music sponsored by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, has become an annual event at Summerstage in New York's Central Park. Last week the stars came out again and gave the lucky New Yorkers in attendance a free concert.

A production of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, hosted by the riotously funny Emmy Award-nominated actress Jackie Hoffman – who plays the role of Yente in the Folksbiene’s upcoming Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof” – the three-hour extravaganza featured over a half-dozen acts which, while all rooted solidly in Yiddish and klezmer tradition, approached it from a variety of angles such that it was almost a mini-version of an entire SummerStage season.Read more: https://forward.com/culture/music/403198/yiddish-under-the-stars-turns-central-park-into-fabulous-panoply-of-sounds/

A production of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, hosted by the riotously funny Emmy Award-nominated actress Jackie Hoffman – who plays the role of Yente in the Folksbiene’s upcoming Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof” – the three-hour extravaganza featured over a half-dozen acts which, while all rooted solidly in Yiddish and klezmer tradition, approached it from a variety of angles such that it was almost a mini-version of an entire SummerStage season.Read more: https://forward.com/culture/music/403198/yiddish-under-the-stars-turns-central-park-into-fabulous-panoply-of-sounds/

A production of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, hosted by the riotously funny Emmy Award-nominated actress Jackie Hoffman – who plays the role of Yente in the Folksbiene’s upcoming Yiddish version of “Fiddler on the Roof” – the three-hour extravaganza featured over a half-dozen acts which, while all rooted solidly in Yiddish and klezmer tradition, approached it from a variety of angles such that it was almost a mini-version of an entire SummerStage season.Read more: https://forward.com/culture/music/403198/yiddish-under-the-stars-turns-central-park-into-fabulous-panoply-of-sounds/

Performers included
– Frank London & His Klezmer All Stars
– Andy Statman
– Cantor Magda Fishman
– Pharaoh’s Daughter with Cantor Basya Schechter
– Golem
– Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird
– Eleanor Reissa
– Zalmen Mlotek

Here's a sampling of the evening's entertainment:

Enjoy!

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Kommon Kiruv Kwestions: A Guide to Hosting Guests on Shabbat

First of all, let's understand that today's video is parody, spoof, satire. If you can tolerate it, there is a payoff at the end. This is one in a series of sketches aimed at sharing the Shabbat experience with guests who don't observe Shabbat regularly.

It's an exaggerated case of kiruv, a word that signifies outreach, usually from the Orthodox Jewish perspective. In this sketch the MC is standup comedian Modi Rosenfeld, who introduces the "annoyingly friendly host" Kloynimus Kakelstein.

It's in the format of a TV game show, with the contestants asked to answer the question "What do I say if my guest asks me why we make a blessing on two loaves of challah? You'll recognize one of the contestants as Menashe Lustig, the chassidic actor-comedian who recently starred in the acclaimed film Menashe.

Enjoy, and Shabbat shalom!

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Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: President Ronald Reagan Tells Soviet Jokes

Every Thursday we've been turning the clock back a few decades to revisit some of our favorite comedy routines by the great comedians of the 20th century. 

But not all the funny jokes were delivered by professional comedians. One of the best jokers was the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who was in office from 1980 to 1989.

He was fond of telling some of his favorite Soviet jokes in many of his speeches. Let's go back about 30 years for a few of his favorites. Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.



#Throwback Thursday    #TBT
Does your organization want to book Al for one of his 20 Jewish humor programs? Click here to check out all the details and program choices at www.JewishSpeakersBureau.com.

Brooklyn's Brighton Beach Baths Evoke Memories of Catskills Comedy

The Borscht Belt era of comedy in the Catskill mountains ended in the 1980s, although Kutsher's, the last of the big hotels, managed to hold out until 2013. After the closing of most hotels, the comedy scene shifted to the Brighton Beach Baths until they also closed in 1995.

Some years later, comedy veterans Freddie Roman, Stewie Stone, and Dick Capri were interviewed by the website thatsbrooklyn.com (now on Facebook) and they reminisced about the good old days. It's a great nostalgia piece and we think you'll enjoy hearing their stories about the long-gone hotels and entertainers.

Here's the video that we found on YouTube. Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.



Does your organization want to book Al for one of his 20 Jewish humor programs? Click here to check out all the details and program choices at www.JewishSpeakersBureau.com.

Jewish-Muslim Iranian Rabbi Blends Two Cultures with Music

 
Eyal Mani grew up as Eyal Said, a Muslim in Iran. One day, when he flew to accompany his mother for medical treatment in Israel, she told him that he was half Jewish, and following the discovery, he decided to settle in Israel, become religious and become a rabbi.  

"I was born in Persia in 1961 and grew up as a Muslim in everything," he says. "My father was a Sufi Muslim, and I knew Judaism only through the 'Jewish' parts of the Koran, from the creation to the revelation at Mount Sinai, I believed the Muslim version that the Jews were originally the chosen people but later betrayed God, so he left them and chose the Muslims.

"My mother raised me as a Muslim too, but over the years she was careful to tell me the stories of Judaism and various midrashim through the Koran. I never asked myself why my father was a musician who was considered an admirer of traditional Persian music, and I drew on his love and understanding of music. He taught me a lot. People would come to our house to play with him and learn from him."

Rabbi Mani established the Mekhilta ensemble, one of the most moving secular and orthodox Jewish musical collaborations.

 

in 2015 he was awarded an Ofir award (the Israeli 'Oscar' award) for writing the score of the film Baba Joon.

Enjoy! 

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A Joke to Start the Week - "Locker Room Cellphone"

It's Monday again and time for another Joke to Start the Week.

Here's the setup:

There are a few guys in the locker room of a golf club and they just finished showering when a cellphone on a bench starts to ring. Sheldon picks it up and says "Hello." And he hears a woman's voice, and then...

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.



Does your organization want to book Al for one of his 20 Jewish humor programs? Click here to check out all the details and program choices at www.JewishSpeakersBureau.com.

Comedian Steve Solomon's Jewish Grandmother Teaches Kosher Laws to His Italian Mother

Steve Solomon is one of America's best story tellers and dialecticians. He delivers his comedy built around the premise that his mother is Italian and his father is Jewish. That's the perfect setup for delivery of a barrage of nonstop jokes and situations involving multiple dialects.

We saw his show My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, and I'm in Therapy in Florida in February. The show originally opened off-Broadway in 2006, and he has been performing it in many locations ever since.
 
His show has been called one part lasagna, one part kreplach and two parts Prozac. Solomon wrote and stars in this one-man show, combining comic voices, sound effects and astounding characterizations to tell stories of the wacky side of the human condition.

In this excerpt he tells about how his Jewish grandmother tried to teach his Italian mother the rules of keeping kosher.

Enjoy!

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Welcoming Shabbat with Shalom Aleichem by Georgian Folk Group

Geo Folk Tour is a music and touristic project which hosts musical tours around Georgia,

accompanied by Georgian Polyphony. How they came to sing Shalom Aleichem is anybody's guess, but we accept it as another example of Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places.

They posted it on YouTube to mark recognition of Georgians' and Jews' relationship

as a subject of intangible cultural heritage with wishes to Israel for a Happy Independence Day.

Enjoy and Shabbat shalom!

 

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Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: Caesar's Writers Remember Picking the Funniest Number

Caesar's Writers was a two hour reunion of writers from Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, that took place on January 24, 1996 at the Writer's Guild theater in Los Angeles.

In this clip from the reunion, Neil Simon explains why he titled his play Laughter on the 23rd Floor, and Carl Reiner recalls the writers trying to come up with the funniest number for a roulette wheel sketch with Imogene Coca.

Enjoy! 

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.



#Throwback Thursday    #TBT