Reviews

Who Took My Bar Munchies?

March 22, 2015

Who ever heard of a bar without bar munchies? But that’s exactly what happened to us recently when my wife and I mustered up the courage to head out with friends on a cold Jerusalem night to check out Gatsby’s, a much talked about new cocktail lounge in downtown Jerusalem. The first thing to know […]

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Cultivating Local Indie Acts at Jacob’s Ladder Music Festival

May 26, 2014

The Jacob’s Ladder music festival, held twice a year at the Nof Ginosar kibbutz along the Sea of Galilee, and which just concluded its spring session this past weekend, has been quietly transforming itself from a groovy environment in which to hear interesting and enjoyable music into a growing platform that cultivates and helps launch local indie […]

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Game of Thrones meets HaTikvah in video mashup

April 29, 2014

I’m not a fan of Game of Thrones. That doesn’t mean I have anything against the popular TV show based on the book series of the same name; I just haven’t found time to fit it into my already too busy TV watching schedule. But Jerusalem virtuoso rock violinist Michael Greilsammer’s new mashup of the […]

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Who Needs Peace Talks? Musical Coexistence in Jerusalem

April 9, 2014

As the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were breaking down last week, the Old City of Jerusalem was an unlikely spot of musical coexistence. And nowhere was that more pronounced than in a hard-to-find back alley called Muristan Square where two performances demonstrated that the situation doesn’t have to be as bleak as […]

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TheTorah.com Embraces Biblical Criticism – Too Far or Not Enough?

February 12, 2014

It was almost a throw away comment, coming in the last half hour of a four part lecture series on “Truth and History in the Bible.” But in it lies the germ of revolution, with the power to rock traditional understandings of Jewish history, religion and the even the very underpinnings of rabbinic authority. The […]

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Atheist Rabbis “In the Closet”

February 5, 2014

Avraham (not his real name) is an Orthodox rabbi living in the center of the country. He is married with five children, and has a comfortable job as a rabbi/educator at a local religious school where he teaches fifth and sixth graders. There’s only one problem: Avraham no longer believes in God. But this newly […]

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Yossi Klein Halevi Book Launch Highlights a Cultural, Centered Jerusalem Village

January 20, 2014

“They promised me heat!” Asher Abraham blurted out at the conclusion of last night’s launch event for Yossi Klein Halevi’s new book “Like Dreamers.” Abraham’s Highlight Foundation had produced the evening at Jerusalem’s First Station shopping and restaurant complex. But looking at the three story tall tee-pee like metal skeleton, punctuated by billowing sheets of plastic, enclosing much of […]

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Isaac Asimov’s Jewish/Israeli Predictions…for 2014

January 6, 2014

Every New Year’s, I like to roll out some predictions of what I think might happen in the 12 months to come. For 2014, though, I want to take a look back, at a set of predictions made on the occasion of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, by the science fiction master Isaac Asimov. […]

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Top zingers from this year’s Comedy for Koby

December 13, 2013

Comedy for Koby rolled into Jerusalem this week and my wife and I were there, along with our three kids, who we treated to their first live comedy show as a Hanukah gift. (Think of it as guffaws instead of gelt.) After what I’d done last year, though, I wasn’t sure if the comedians would be […]

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Musical “Ah Jerusalem” Debuts at the Tower of David Museum

October 21, 2013

It sounds like the set up to an only-in-Jerusalem joke: What do you get if you put a love-struck King Solomon, an evil Crusader with a heart of gold, and a chain smoking Golda Meir all in the same room? If you add in a few catchy song and dance numbers and a heaping dose […]

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