When Cioma Schönhaus fled to Switzerland from Berlin on his bicycle in 1943—a story he tells in The Forger, a memoir of the four years he spent living by his wits as a Jew in the heart of wartime Germany—there wasn’t much that he could take with him. Not much that he could touch, at ...

“The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.” Philip Roth, in Operation Shylock, was referring to Berlin’s “Easter Parade” and, ...

To download an MP3 of “Eight Days of Hanukkah,” click on the album cover at left and save the .zip file to your computer. File size is approximately 3 megabytes. (Mac users should control-click and select “Save Link as.”)

MORE: Read Jeffrey Goldberg’s account of the story behind the song.

As a teenager, Jerry Wicentowski rebelled against his Orthodox upbringing, but only to a degree. He wouldn’t take the bus from his Brooklyn home to Washington Square Park to join his friends for bluegrass jam sessions but instead he stayed at home, incessantly practicing guitar runs in his bedroom to the great frustration of his ...

For as long as I can remember, my father has made fun of Hasidim. In fact, he rarely uses that word; instead, he refers to the Hasidic Jews in my hometown of Montreal, who happen to be prominent in the textile and garbage-bag industries, as “garmentologists” or “garbologists.”
As a child, I thought this was a ...

Alicia Jo Rabins has been around the block, musically speaking. She began as a toddler, with Suzuki violin lessons, then went on to play in punk rock bands, klezmer ensembles, and, in 2003, released a solo album of original and traditional Appalachian and shtetl-influenced songs on fiddle. She also performs with the ...