Even after four decades of fiddling around, violinist Gil Shaham says what he does for a living is, well, a bit weird. “Playing on the violin is such a strange, unnatural thing,” says the 48-year-old Israeli American musician. “The deeper you get into it, it’s a strange way of looking at the world.” Strange or…
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On Stage
Music
Ladino is the language, S.F. the setting for world premiere of grand Jewish oratorio
We generally associate the word “oratorio” with weighty musical works on Christian subjects by Baroque composers like J.S. Bach. But on Tuesday, April 30,…
Talking With ...
Q&A: He abandoned journalism for stand-up comedy and one-man shows
David Kleinberg, 76, spent 34 years as a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Then he packed up his writing and editing skills and moved into a…
On Stage
Young Jewish opera star comes to Bay Area as King David himself
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen is quite sure he’s the only man working in opera today who spent seven years serving as a cantor for High Holiday services at a…
Celebrity Jews
Daveed Diggs takes a ride with Steph Curry; Jews and vampires; etc.
Diggs and Schaaf ride with Curry Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry hosts a talk show on his YouTube channel called “5 Minutes from Home.” The…
Theater
Hebrew-language play tells a Mizrachi family mystery
Four sisters arguing in an apartment while trying to puzzle out the mystery of their mother’s disappearance — displaying Israeli family life in all its…
Theater
Human stories of immigration in S.F. one-man show
A woman forced to flee Iraq after teaching American literature there. A gay, pagan, survivalist goat rancher along the U.S. border with Mexico. A…
Storytelling
Remixing Yiddish tales and poems for new audiences
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Yiddish language enjoyed a flowering of expression in poetry, literature, journalism and theater as Eastern…
Theater
As ‘Evan Hansen’ arrives in S.F., lessons in teen social media literacy
The goal of the JCC of San Francisco’s Teen Arts Immersion Program is to have life imitate art. TAIP brings teens to a musical twice a semester and uses…