Yiddish NY FilmFest opens Sun night 12/21: “The Shop on Main Street” 1965 Czech-made Oscar-winner starring Ida Kaminska. Talkback Mon aftn 12/22 Irena Klepfisz, Yelena Shmulenson, Josh Waletzky & me +Yiddish clips of Ida Kaminska’s shmues on Studs Terkel radio www.yiddishnewyork.com/yny-2025-fil...

HOW 🤯

Symphony Space just released some great seats for Thursday’s Isle of Klezbos show! Low ticket alert, book now: www.symphonyspace.org/events/revel...

Ticket link just posted for our next Joe’s Pub show: Isle of Klezbos plays the Ides of March! Full sextet onstage at NYC’s Public Theater cabaret, Sunday 3/15/2026 at 6pm publictheater.org/performances...

Thursday NYC 7:30 PM come see Isle of Klezbos at Symphony Space! Rare uptown show, & on a proper concert stage for Revelry series: The Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater. get reservations soon for Dec 11 (and yes, band swag & tickets make great early Hanukkah gifts) www.symphonyspace.org/events/revel...

Update: Yiddish New York film fest talkback panel for “The Shop on Main Street” (Mon aftn 22/22 discussion, following Sun night 12/21 screening) features Irena Klepfisz & Yelena Shmulenson. I am so honored to moderate this shmues! Plus excerpts from Studs Terkel’s radio interview with Ida Kaminska

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

For Yiddish New York 2025, I’ll present a lecture on Shirley Baron, mid 20th-century percussionist & bandleader. Thanks @alte.klezmor.im for your YIVO & NYPL archival research which led us to stories of Shirley’s life both on and off bandstands in NYC & “the [Catskill] mountains” yiddishnewyork.com

Isle of Klezbos welcomes trombonist Reut Regev twice as special guest artist: This Sunday 2pm at The Emelin/Mamaroneck & Thursday, Dec 11 at Symphony Space 7:30pm on NYC’s Upper West Side, links at Klezbos.com (low ticket alert for Westchester) Pam Fleming/tpt, me on drums. Stage photos: Hank Gans

Isle of Klezbos will play Mamaroneck’s Emelin Theatre this Sunday at 2pm, & just in time — a delightful “Know Your Neighbors” interview: youtu.be/Gad0G65C4HE This episode airs tomorrow (Friday, Dec 5) at 8:30pm on LMC channel 75 Optimum / 36 Verizon. It repeats through the weekend Saturday & Sunday

$10 off Emelin Theatre tickets: Isle of Klezbos plays Mamaroneck NY matinee Sunday, December 7 at 2pm. Use discount code FRIDAY10 (offer good til this Sun 11/30). Great show & such a deal, Westchester! emelin.org/event/isle-o...

“Last Candle” is a Jill Sobule original she wrote among songs for the stageplay “Yentl.” She taught us this music when Isle of Klezbos performed for the project a decade ago. We share this tribute from 6/24/2025 at Joe’s Pub, dedicated as a memorial to Jill (with her own intro) youtu.be/SImrCOCtODg

Next month Isle Klezbos plays Manhattan’s UWS! Some great seats are still left but this one might sell out soon. Hope to see you at Symphony Space, tell your NYC friends & family.

Isle of Klezbos sextet plays The Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck NY four weeks from this afternoon: Sunday, Dec 7 at 2pm. Klezmer, Yiddish swing & tango and more with great gals on the bandstand!Tell your Westchester family and friends emelin.org/event/isle-o...

Newsom: "It's not about rule of law anymore. It's rule of Don. He's choosing which court decisions he agrees with. He's quite literally running an extortion racket. He's doing it with some of the most powerful corporate leaders. What does everything have in common? Tariffs. They're about leverage"

Borscht Belt Film Fest screened anti-fascist 1976 “The Front” starring blacklistee Zero Mostel. On the movie talkback with me were Lita Slutsky Newman Moses (author of “The Red Hotel” re Ellenville’s Arrowhead Lodge) & her Popular Front historian son Daniel Moses. BBFF moderator/maven Jay Blotcher

I’m still shocked that stories like this which come out daily still get largely ignored. The most corrupt person to ever hold any public office in US history. I will keep posting them every day and try to amplify them, even when most media doesn’t care. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 5: Vito Marcantonio There are many who dismiss our vision for New York as impossible. To them, I say we need look only to our past for proof of how we can shape the future. Tomorrow is Election Day. And this is the final Until It's Done of our campaign.

True that.

Why Bret Stephens Frightens Jews Like Me.

Factcheck: True.

BREAKING: Jack Smith is insisting upon a public hearing if Congress wants to talk to him Good. Why does the GOP want backroom secret questioning? What are Republicans afraid of? Let the American people see & hear for themselves!

The Ronald Reagan clip that Trump insists is a "fake." It's 100% genuine and attested to by the Reagan Library.

Tragedy of the commons, a term typically used to describe the lack of incentive to care for a shared natural resource, applies equally to the unwillingness to tend to our threatened democracy.

Breaking: The Supreme Court is now officially considering taking up a case overturning same-sex marriage. This is the first time in history the court has considered rolling back this right.

Six months after ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine kids, in Hays County, Texas, County Judge Ruben Becerra says DHS has ignored his attempts to get answers: “We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them. By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”

#Epstein #Ghislaine The pedophiles are still out there. Ghislaine deserves only the worst. Come on “any excuse” Mike Johnson. You can do better to secure America for little girls and boys. flip.it/LSVAiR

This is located in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, close to Fullerton and Sheffield. It's a densely populated area near DePaul University. I'm pleased to see the community standing up against these despicable individuals.

Yiddish NY FilmFest opener: Anti-fascist Oscar-winner “The Shop on Main Street” starring Ida Kaminska, icon of a Yiddish stage dynasty. Plus genius tango-erotic tale; bawdy silent accompanied live; & doc “Partisans of Vilna” — all on HUC big screen. Co-curators Josh Waletzky & me yiddishnewyork.com

Yiddish lullaby “Unter Beymer” performed by Isle of Klezbos (Melissa Fogarty sings) at Joe’s Pub NYC on June 24, 2025. This melody by Alexander Olshanetsky is back-engineered to resemble an aria from “Halka”: Both songs from Moishe Oysher’s 1940 Yiddish film “Overture to Glory” youtu.be/_f0DwUswAvw

A musician, Oriana Korol, was peacefully playing clarinet with her protest band outside ICE facilities in Portland, OR. When the band started playing “Ghostbusters,” ICE thugs suddenly poured outside, slammed her into the mud, arrested her and took her to a jail 9 miles away in Vancouver, WA.

looks interesting, I registered. the author is one of the original klezmer revival dudes of the 70s & interviewed a lot of old timers when they were still around.

this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.

Hundreds of folks this morning in Larchmont NY #nokings So much honking in support including enormous trucks on I-95

Earlybird $10 discount this holiday weekend only: Isle of Klezbos plays Westchester’s Emelin Theatre on Sunday afternoon, Dec 7th. Use code FALL10 (til noon this Tuesday). Tell your friends! We’ll bring our all-gal sextet to this Mamaroneck NY stage 2pm all ages. Tickets: emelin.org/event/isle-o...

Sun, Nov 2 “The Front” screens at Borscht Belt Film Fest www.borschtbeltfilmfest.org/films2025 Zero Mostel’s McCarthy-era showbiz role resembles his real life story in a Catskills resort episode. I’m a guest panelist for this all-too-relevant, brilliant movie also ft Herschel Bernardi & Woody Allen

I’ll be a guest panelist for “The Front” screening Nov 2nd at the Borscht Belt Film Festival: Set in Blacklist-era showbiz, starring Zero Mostel on location in da Catskills (directed by Martin Ritt, with Woody Allen in the title role) borschtbeltfilmfest.org/films2025

We’ll play Symphony Space on Thursday, Dec 11: Isle of Klezbos debut for the Revelry concert series on NYC’s Upper West Side! Tickets now www.symphonyspace.org/events/revel...

oof, my research took me here... this is Milton Kestenbaum (1914–2004), a well known orchestral bassist & one of the sons of the Kestenbaum musician families from Przemyśl I'm looking into. here he was being interrogated by the Committee on Un-American Activities in '56😮‍💨 archive.org/details/sim_...

It’s not a crime to be in this country as an undocumented person. It’s a civil violation. But you know what is a crime? Taking a bribe from undercover agents in exchange for the promise of government contracts WHEN YOU’RE THE FCKING BORDER CZAR.

Isle of Klezbos latest video “Mosholu Barbecue” at Joe’s Pub: Original klezmer boogaloo by our reedplayer Debra Kreisberg. Featuring Debra on sax, Pam Fleming trumpet, Shoko Nagai piano, Dave Hofstra upright bass & me on drums. I love this piece! Great lines, solos, grooves youtu.be/LWATZqNL0P0?...

My small contribution to writing on Ukraine, published thanks to the @forward.com At the end you can also read my translation of Dovid Hofshteyn’s poem “Ukraine” forward.com/yiddish-worl...

Truly insane post from The Federalist, which includes the recommendation that the government pressure tech companies to limit access to BlueSky because of the reaction to Kirk's death thefederalist.com/2025/09/15/w...

Klezmer Brunch weather today! Isle of Klezbos plays City Winery NYC 12pm-2pm. Doors just opened. Tickets: citywinery.com/new-york-cit...

Prepping for my talk this Saturday at Borscht Belt Museum festival, found this @jewishcurrents.bsky.social retro blog. Henry Foner had also presented this memoir in 1997 at Phil Brown’s Catskills Institute conference (where I was also a participant, invited with Metropolitan Klezmer to play too!)

Support Mohammed And Family in Gaza To Survive And Rebuild! via a friend who knows him personally for years. She relays: Mohammed has been losing his teeth to malnutrition & has gone in vain to “aid” death traps, donation buys exorbitant black market flour which he shares chuffed.org/project/1227...

They smashed his window & beat him & left him bloodied with 9 stitches because he didn’t have his lights on. During the day.

‘How Are You Going to Survive?’: Doctor Describes ‘Horrific’ Humanitarian Situation in Gaza zeteo.com/p/how-are-...

This Sunday at noon: Isle of Klezbos returns to City Winery Klezmer Brunch! $5 off advance tickets (our last show this summer). Doors open 11am for nosh & bar, 5-piece band 12pm-1:30pm on CW’s Loft Stage citywinery.com/new-york-cit...